Vox Sentences: Getting ready for Hillary

1. "Hillary for you and me, bring back our democracy"

Clinton speaks at an award ceremony for the 2015 Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting March 23, 2015, in Washington, DC. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

• Hillary Clinton will reportedly announce her presidential run on Sunday in a bid to destroy political reporters' weekends.

  [NYT / Amy Chozick and Maggie Haberman]

• NYT reports: "Mrs. Clinton is expected to begin her campaign with a video message on social media, followed by a visit to important early-primary states next week, said two people briefed on her plans."

• Aides to the campaign say the low-key start is meant to avoid failures of her 2008 campaign, which they believe faltered because Clinton looked stilted in front of large crowds.

  [Washington Post / Anne Gearan and Dan Balz]

• The event will serve to upstage the Monday presidential campaign announcement of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL).

  [Washington Post / Ed O'Keefe]

• Clinton looks like a lock for the Democratic nomination, and while she also did in 2008, none of the factors that allowed President Obama a surprise win are in play this time around.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• She's also polling far better than she did at this point in 2007.

  [NYT / Nate Cohn]

• That arguably is harmful to her, as it means she won't benefit from being put through the paces the way a normal primary winner would be.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• Expect Clinton's campaign to be much more vocally feminist and concerned with family work-life balance issues like child care and parental leave this time around.

  [Vox / Jonathan Allen]

• You can expect her economic platform to draw heavily from a report by the Committee for Inclusive Prosperity, which called for labor market reforms to increase workers' power relative to employers.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• Clinton's record as Secretary of State demonstrated that she's considerably more right-wing than President Obama on everything from Iran to Syria to Israel.

  [Washington Post / Aaron David Miller]

• There's a lot of anxiety among Democrats as to whether Clinton is a good enough campaigner, but in practice individual politicians' campaign skills tend not to matter very much.

  [NY Mag / Jason Zengerle]

• This is as good a time as many to revisit the greatest song in the history of American politics, "Hillary 4 U and Me."

  [Gene Wang]

2. Not-so-speedy trial

Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, alleged mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, leaves court after a hearing in Islamabad on January 1, 2015. (Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images)

• Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, who stands accused of planning the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, that killed over 160 people, has been released on bail from a Pakistani prison.

  [Reuters / Syed Raza Hassan]

• Lakhvi is a major figure in the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

  [CNN / Sophia Saifi and Jason Hanna]

• His trial, along with that of co-conspirators, was being conducted largely in secret at a Pakistani prison until the Pakistani high court ruled he must be allowed bail.

  [NYT / Salman Masood and Declan Walsh]

• The US and Indian government expressed grave concern over the release, with Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin saying, "This has reinforced the perception that Pakistan has a dual policy on dealing with terrorists."

  [AP / Zarar Khan]

• Lashkar-e-Taiba has historically been involved in skirmishes with Indian militias over Kashmir, and many believe the Pakistani government has supported it in an attempt to hurt India.

  [WSJ / Saeed Shah and Niharika Mandhana]

• That said, the Pakistani government has publicly fought his release, with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif invoking a "colonial-era public order act" to keep him in prison when bail was first ordered in December.

  [NYT / Salman Masood and Declan Walsh]

3. Smoking Cubanos with Castro in cabanas

The first time President Obama and Raúl Castro met. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

• President Obama and Cuban leader Raúl Castro are expected to meet tomorrow at the Summit of the Americas in Panama City, Panama.

  [ABC News / Jim Avila]

• It will be the second talk Obama and Castro have had.

  [Washington Post / Karen DeYoung and Nick Miroff]

• Previously, Obama and Castro shook hands and spoke briefly at Nelson Mandela's funeral on December 10, 2013, in Soweto, South Africa; it was the first public exchange of words between US and Cuban leaders since the Cuban Revolution.

• Before that, President Clinton shook the hand of Castro's brother Fidel, then the leader of Cuba, in 2000 at a closed-door UN meeting.

  [BBC]

• For more on the thaw in US-Cuban relations, see our explainer.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

4. Misc.

• Denmark's birth rate is falling, and their sex ed classes are getting more pro-baby to compensate.

  [NYT / Danny Hakim]

• Robert E. Lee committed treason in defense of slavery, and Ulysses S. Grant was America's greatest general and among its best presidents. So why is Lee so much more popular today?

  [Slate / Jamelle Bouie]

• Tatiana Maslany's performance on Orphan Black is, by far, the best of any actor on TV, and this is a great explanation of why.

  [NYT / Lili Loofbourow]

• The Chiquita banana company was convicted eight years ago of sponsoring terrorism in Colombia. Now, finally, its victims might get some restitution.

  [New Republic / Steven Cohen]

5. Verbatim

• "We’re doing our job by making every parent in America feel anxious about everything."

  [Law & Order: Special Victims Unit executive producer Warren Leight to Entertainment Weekly / Will Robinson]

• "One of the great life experiences is the lessons of four years of Harvard all-nighters. So I pulled an all-nighter, and I wrote a plan for transforming Poland from a communist, central-planned economy to a market economy."

  [Jeffrey Sachs to Tyler Cowen]

• "Many of my loved ones had a harder time adjusting to my blindness than I did … They feel guilty about being spared my difficulties. I feel guilty that they feel guilty. They feel guilty about feeling guilty and making me feel guilty. And so on."

  [Vox / Christina Hartmann]

• "Over the next decade, Powers, by any rational accounting, lost his mind. He cut off both earlobes, chewed off a finger, sliced through his Achilles’ tendon, pushed staples into his face and forehead, swallowed a toothbrush and then tried to cut open his abdomen to retrieve it and injected what he considered 'a pretty fair amount of bacteria-laden fluid' into his brain cavity after smashing a hole in his forehead."

  [NYT / Mark Binelli]

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