Republican Leaders in Tricky Spot on Farm Bill and Drought Aid

By JONATHAN WEISMAN

The House speaker, John A. Boehner, and other Republican leaders have found themselves caught in a squeeze between their party's most ardent conservatives and drought-ridden farmers, with just days left before a monthlong August recess.

The Senate has already passed a major overhaul of the nation's farm programs, but a parallel effort in the House has been stymied, in large part by conservatives who have pressed for deep cuts to the expanded food stamp program. Without movement, a bipartisan drought relief package has had no vehicle to get out of Congress on.

Last week, House Republican leaders indicated they would back a one-year extension of existing farm programs, crop insurance and subsidies, with a drought package attached. But on Monday, it became clear that will be no easy task this week.

In the morning, the American Farmland Trust, an environmentally minded agriculture group, came out against the plan.

“Our goal remains clear: pass a fair and comprehensive five-year farm bill this year,” said Jon Scholl, the group's president. “We will vigorously oppose an extension of the current act that does not appropriately set the stage for final action on a new, comprehensive, multiyear farm bill to be enacted yet this year. We also oppose the disproportionate cuts to conservation programs as a means of funding disaster assistance.”

That gave cover to Democrats, who had already said they do not want to give Republicans help dealing with their right flank.

Then the American Farm Bureau Federation, a far larger group with strong presence in Republican states and districts, piled on.

“A one-year extension offers our farm and ranch families nothing in the way of long-term policy certainty,” said the group's president, Bob Stallman. “Farmers and ranchers always face decisions that carry very serious financial ramificati ons, such as planting a crop, buying land or building a herd, and we need clear and confident signals from our lawmakers.”

On Monday afternoon, the Club for Growth, a fiscally conservative small-government political action committee, hit from the other side.

“House Republican leadership should promise fiscal conservatives that they will not use a short-term extension as a vehicle to get to conference on a massive new farm bill,” said the group's president, Chris Chocola. “Last month, leadership pulled a similar trick with the highway bill. Republicans should be fighting to cut spending and limit government, not compromising with Democrats to spend billions of dollars on farm subsidies and food stamps.”

\'Super PAC\' Backs Santa Impersonator for Michigan House Seat

By JONATHAN WEISMAN

The “Brat PAC” wants Santa and his reindeer in the House.

Liberty for All, a new “super PAC” financed almost entirely by one college student's inheritance from his grandfather, has jumped into the race for Michigan's 11th District. The House race opened after the surprise resignation of Representative Thaddeus McCotter.

The group's choice to take the seat? Kerry Bentivolio, a libertarian-leaning reindeer farmer and Santa impersonator.

Liberty for All was founded by the unlikely pairing of John Ramsey, a 21-year-old from Nacogdoches, Tex., and Preston Bates, a Kentucky political operative. The two met when they were campaigning for Ron Paul and decided to martial Mr. Ramsey's money behind candidates who will carry Mr. Paul's libertarian flame. In its June 30 disclosure to the Federal Election Commission, the super PAC reported that it had raised $1.9 million, the vast majority coming from Mr. Ramsey's p ocket.

In May, after Thomas H. Massie, Liberty for All's handpicked candidate in a Kentucky Republican primary, cruised to victory, the news media began calling the group, the Brat PAC, and the nickname has stuck.

Michigan's 11th District was on no one's radar screen until Mr. McCotter's campaign inexplicably failed to deliver enough authentic signatures to get on the ballot for his sixth term. The only Republican left on the ticket was Mr. Bentivolio.

The Democrats saw a fat target in the Santa impersonator. But local Republican leaders stepped in, interviewed potential candidates, and backed Nancy Cassis, a former Michigan state senator for a write-in campaign. The Brat PAC smelled a rat.

“Members of the state party establishment met behind closed doors to pick a candidate they could count on to toe the moderate line: Nancy Cassis. That's when Liberty For All stepped in to support the real conservative, and the grass roots choice,” the group announced on its Web site.

Since July 23, Liberty for All has spent nearly $123,000 on Mr. Bentivolio's behalf, the bulk of it going to automated phone calls, phone banking and direct mail ahead of the Aug. 7 primary.

Democrats Move to Include Gay Marriage in Party Platform

By JEREMY W. PETERS and MICHAEL D. SHEAR

Democrats moved to make same-sex marriage a part of their party platform at their convention in September, placing language that would declare a right for gays and lesbians to marry on track for approval by the party's leadership.

Party officials met over the weekend in Minneapolis and approved the first step in the platform-amending process. In two weeks, the entire platform committee will vote on the matter at a meeting scheduled in Detroit. Then, if approved, it would move on to convention delegates in Charlotte for final approval in September.

According to Democrats who were briefed on the vote in Minneapolis, there was no objection when the issue came up.

The platform language approved over the weekend also included a condemnation of the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing legal same-sex marriages.

The Democratic Party's move comes more than two months after President Obama personally backed the rights of same-sex couples to wed, making their action decidedly less controversial than it could have been had the party been in conflict with its leader.

Gay rights supporters praised the vote. “Like Americans from all walks of life, the Democratic Party has recognized that committed and loving gay and lesbian couples deserve the right to have their relationships respected as equal under the law,” said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign.  “I believe that one day very soon the platforms of both major parties will include similar language on this issue.

Boehner Pushes for Conference Panel on Domestic Violence Measure

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

After a months-long stalemate over a bill to protect women from crimes of domestic violence, Speaker John A. Boehner on Monday named eight House negotiators to serve on a nonexistent conference committee, one that would be charged with bridging the divide between House Republicans and the Senate.

In April, the Senate voted to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, and it urged the House to move on the legislation.

The House subsequently passed its own measure, which omitted provisions of the Senate bill that would allow Indian tribal courts to try certain non-Indians in some cases of domestic violence on reservations, expand the number of temporary visas for illegal immigrants who were victims of domestic violence and extend the protections of that act to gay men and lesbians.

The House has since declined to take up the Senate bill, noting that it raises money to pay for some of the provisions not in cluded in the House measure. (Under the Constitution, bills that raise revenue must originate in the House.)

Senate Democrats have accused House Republicans of endangering women by refusing to take up the Senate measure.

A formal conference committee cannot be convened until the House and the Senate vote to convene it. Mr. Boehner is essentially jumping the gun by naming members to the hypothetical conference to pressure the Senate to move forward.

In a statement Mr. Boehner said: “Completing work on legislation to renew and strengthen the Violence Against Women Act is critical in our efforts to combat domestic violence and sexual assault. The law has broad, bipartisan support in both chambers, and I'm announcing our negotiators today in the hopes that we can begin to resolve the differences between the House and Senate bills. The House is ready and willing to begin those discussions, and I would urge Senate Democrats to come to the table so this critical legislation can be sent to the president for his signature as soon as possible.”

These are the House members assigned to the committee, all of them Republicans: Sandy Adams of Florida; Mary Bono Mack of California; Trey Gowdy of South Carolina; Nan Hayworth of New York; Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington; Shelley Moore Capito of West Virgina; F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin; and Lamar Smith of Texas, who is head of the House Judiciary Committee.

Pogue: One of Apple\'s Best Ideas Ever, Made Worse

I think the MagSafe connector is one of Apple's best ideas ever. It's on the end of every Mac laptop's power cord. It attaches to the laptop with a powerful magnet-but if anybody trips on it, it detaches and falls harmlessly to the floor. The laptop doesn't go crashing down with it.

In this year's laptops, though, like the MacBook Air and the 15-inch Retina display MacBook, Apple changed the design of the MagSafe connector to make it skinnier. Everyone who'd bought a bunch of power adapters for their old Apple laptops has to buy a $10 adapter for each one of them to make it fit the new laptops.

But that's not the worst of it.

The beauty of the MagSafe connector was that Apple had found precisely the right balance between attachment and detachment. Strong enough to hold the connector in place, weak enough to detach if it gets yanked.

The MagSafe 2 connector fails that balance test. Badly. The magnet is too weak. It's so weak, it keeps falling out. It falls out if you brush it. It falls out if you tip the laptop slightly. It falls out if you look at it funny. It's a huge, huge pain.

That weakness is compounded by a second problem: a return to the “T” design of older MagSafe connectors. In other words, this thing comes straight into the side of the laptop - the cable shoots out at 90 degrees - instead of hugging the side with the cord parallel, like the old “L” connectors. As a result, it protrudes a half inch beyond the left edge. You can't rest the left side of the laptop on your thigh. It's constantly getting bumped. And since the magnet has all the grip strength of an elderly gnat, guess what happens?

I bought a MacBook Air for myself last month. It's my main machine - I'm on this thing many hours a day - so I spent the huge bucks and loaded it up with memory and storage. And I'll tell you, as a laptop, it's a dream. It's by far the fastest laptop I've ever used. It starts up in a matter of seconds . Even Photoshop loads quickly. I routinely keep 15 apps open simultaneously, and I can flip between them without ever having to wait.

But the poorly designed MagSafe connector is infuriating. It's the worst Apple design blunder since the hockey-puck mouse.

Some of the customers on the Apple Store Web site (who give it, cumulatively, a 1.5-star rating), suggest buying the older MagSafe power adapters and equipping them with the $10 adapter, which they say grips the laptop better. Unfortunately, that's a big expense, it creates an even bigger protrusion from the left side, and the tiny adapter is easy to lose.

Others are just exasperated. “I find myself trying to think of a workaround,” says one of the unhappy customers on the Apple store Web site. “Glue? No. Binder clip? No. Duct tape? Maybe. Stupid design.”

I'm with you, brother. Say amen and pass the duct tape.

A Trip to Poland, With an Eye on Swing States

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

Mitt Romney's arrival in Poland on Monday provides an opportunity for the Republican candidate to embrace the ideals and values of one of America's closest allies in front of a global audience.

His campaign hopes they are watching in the Rust Belt.

Mr. Romney arrived in Gdansk for the start of two days of talks with Polish leaders, to be capped off by remarks from Warsaw on Tuesday. Aides have signaled that he will focus on the relationship between the two countries and strategic concerns about Russia.

But at home - where votes count - the trip's imagery may be more important than the specifics of Mr. Romney's policy pronouncements.

Polish voters make up large chunks of the electorate in several swing states that Mr. Romney must win if he wants to capture the White House in November. His campaign is clearly hoping that the high-profile visit this week will help woo those vot ers.

The two states with the largest number of Polish-Americans are out of reach for Mr. Romney: New York and Illinois, which together have close to two million Polish-Americans, will be firmly in the Democratic column in November. (The single biggest Polish-American population center? Chicago - President Obama's home town.)

But millions of Polish-Americans call Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin home. And those are three key states for Mr. Romney.

In some small towns in those three states, as many as half or more of the residents say they have Polish ancestry. Mr. Romney is hoping that a visit to Poland - and a warm embrace by Lech Walesa, the former Polish president - will help him capture a higher percentage of those voters.

Mr. Walesa, who has had a chilly relationship with Mr. Obama, effectively endorsed Mr. Romney during their meeting on Monday.

“I wish you to be successful because this success is needed to the United States, of course , but to Europe and the rest of the world, too,” Mr. Walesa said to Mr. Romney during a photo-op after private discussions. “Governor Romney, get your success - be successful!”

Mr. Romney is also hoping to capitalize on anger among some Poles toward Mr. Obama. In 2009, as part of his “reset” in relations with Russia, the president decided against a missile defense system based partly in Poland. And in May of this year, Mr. Obama offended some Poles and Polish-Americans by referring to “Polish death camps” instead of “Nazi death camps” during a ceremony at the White House.

Winning the Polish vote may not be that easy for Mr. Romney, however.

Polish-Americans do not vote in a block. A survey by the Piast Institute, which studies Polish-American affairs, found that 36 percent of Polish-Americans identified as Democrats. Thirty-three percent said they were independents. And just 26 percent said they were Republicans.

In a demographic sur vey in 2008 by the institute, 52 percent of Polish-Americans voted for Mr. Obama, while just 42 percent voted for Senator John McCain of Arizona.

However, the institute also noted that 44 percent of Polish-Americans say they are conservative. “It is not unreasonable to conclude that many Polish-American Democrats tend to be in the more conservative wing of the party,” the group said.

Can Mr. Romney tap into some of those voters to win the Polish-American vote in November? And if he does, will it help him win some of those battleground states?

In the latest polls, Mr. Obama has been leading Mr. Romney in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. To win there, Mr. Romney will have to do more than just win over a few more Polish-Americans.

On the other hand, Mr. Romney's team knows that the contests in those states could easily narrow as election day nears, especially if the economy continues to struggle over the next several months.

In that case, every vote will count - something that Mr. Romney will no doubt be thinking of as he delivers his remarks in Warsaw on Tuesday.

Follow Michael D. Shear on Twitter at @shearm.

Romney Comments on Palestinians Draw Criticism

By ASHLEY PARKER

JERUSALEM - Mitt Romney found himself on the defensive yet again on his overseas trip, this time after offending Palestinian leaders with comments he made at a breakfast fund-raiser here on Monday.

Speaking to roughly four dozen donors at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, Mr. Romney suggested that cultural differences between the Israelis and the Palestinians were the reason the Israelis were so much more economically successful than the Palestinians. He also vastly understated the income disparities between the two groups.

In his speech, Mr. Romney mentioned two books that had influenced his thinking about nations - “Guns, Germs and Steel,” by Jared Diamond, and “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” by David S. Landes. Mr. Diamond's book, Mr. Romney said, argues that the physical characteristics of the land account for the success of the people living there, while Mr. Landes's book, he continued, argues that c ulture is the defining factor.

“Culture makes all the difference,” Mr. Romney said. “And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things.”

“As you come here and you see the G.D.P. per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000, and compare that with the G.D.P. per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality,” he said.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Saeb Erekat, a senior aide to President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, called Mr. Romney's remarks “racist.”

“It is a racist statement and this man doesn't realize that the Palestinian economy cannot reach its potential because there is an Israeli occupation,” Mr. Erekat said. “It seems to me this man lacks information, knowledge, vision and understanding of this region and its people.”

Mr. Romney understated the difference between per capita incomes by a wide margin the difference, suggesting that Israelis earn about twice what Palestinians make.

In fact, according to an estimate by the Central Intelligence Agency, in 2009 Israel had a per capita GDP of roughly $29,800, while in 2008 - the last year the C.I.A. has numbers on their website for the Palestinians - the per capita G.D.P. of the West Bank and Gaza was $2,900.

Though Mr. Romney came to Israel to offer his support for the country, delivering a speech Sunday night in Jerusalem in which he offered a strong defense of Israel's right to protect itself against the threat of a nuclear Iran, Mr. Romney also met Sunday with the Palestinian Authority's prime minister, Salam Fayyad. In public, the two men made small talk about the London Olympics.

After Mr. Romney's remarks drew criticism, hi s campaign said that the Associated Press had “grossly mischaracterized” the remarks by not providing the full context. For instance, the campaign said, after mentioning the per capita G.D.P. of Israel and Palestine, Mr. Romney also said: “And that is also between other countries that are near or next to each other. Chile and Ecuador, Mexico and the United States.”

The comments Monday are the second time that Mr. Romney has unwittingly offended a group of people in a part of the world he was visiting. When he arrived in London on the first stop of his trip, Mr. Romney set off a media firestorm when he seemed to cast question on the city's preparedness for the Olympic Games.

Q&A: Printing a Problematic PDF

By J.D. BIERSDORFER

I have a PDF file that just won't print every time I try. Even though I can open it in Adobe Reader, I assume the file is corrupt in some way - but is there any way to get a printed copy of it?

It is possible that the PDF file contains some element that the program or the printer is having a problem processing, like damaged fonts or images within the document. If possible, you might try downloading a new copy of the file (or recreating it, if it was one you made yourself) from the original source and seeing if the replacement version will print.

If you cannot get a new copy of the file, you can try a workaround Adobe has built into its software. With the problem file open on screen in Adobe Reader, go to the File menu and choose Print. But instead of clicking the Print button in the box, click the Advanced button. On the Advanced screen, turn on the check box next to “Print as Image.” Click the O.K. button and t hen click Print.

Although it is not guaranteed to succeed, you may get a copy of the file printed because Adobe Reader is basically sending a picture of the document to the printer instead of the PDF itself. This method could bypass any internally corrupted elements within the PDF. If it does print, the resulting document may look a little fuzzy (much like some low-resolution photographs or Web-page graphics do when printed) but you might be able to adjust the resolution in the printer's settings to get sharper results.