Vox Sentences: Who killed the Keystone XL pipeline?

The Keystone pipeline is kaput; Ben Carson Defends Himself From Allegations He Never Stabbed Anyone; a bundle of Supreme Court birth-control-cases joy.

TOP NEWS

KXL, RIP

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

• The Keystone XL pipeline was formally declared dead today at 11:45am Eastern Standard Time.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• The cause of death is currently under review. Possible diagnoses include:

• Ritual sacrifice by the Obama administration in order to preserve "global leadership" (in President Obama's words) going into the UN climate summit in Paris next month.

  [AP]

• Chronically low oil prices. Under current prices, Keystone's investors might have struggled to break even.

  [Los Angeles Times / Christi Parsons and Paul Richter]

• A deflating jobs argument: the State Department's finding that the pipeline would create only 35 permanent jobs in the US was a pretty big blow to Keystone supporters who argued it was a job creator.

  [Washington Post / Glenn Kessler]

• An attack of activism: Climate change activists have had the Keystone XL pipeline in their sights since Obama's first term, and helped make it a serious partisan issue. They probably do deserve some credit for killing the pipeline.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

West Point Blank

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

• A lot of the appeal of Ben Carson, occasional frontrunner for the Republican nomination, comes from his personal history: he had a rough, impoverished upbringing in Detroit and dealt with serious anger issues as a teenager, before becoming an ROTC star, a Yale student and an award-winning neurosurgeon.

  [Vox / Jenee Desmond-Harris]

• That's the story, at least. But yesterday, CNN published an article in which several people who'd known Carson growing up said they had no recollection of his anger issues — or of incidents he's written about in which he threatened his mother with a hammer or attempted to stab another youth.

  [CNN Scott Glover and Maeve Reston]

• Carson fought back against the CNN piece, leading to this insta-classic headline: "Ben Carson Defends Himself Against Allegations That He Never Attempted to Murder a Child."

  [New York / Eric Levitz]

• Then, today, Politico challenged another Carson claim: that he met Gen. Lynn Westmoreland when he was in ROTC, and was offered a "full scholarship" to West Point.

  [Politico / Kyle Cheney]

• Carson and his allies shot back that he has always said he didn't end up applying to West Point, or any other school except Yale, because he couldn't afford the admissions fee. And since all tuition at West Point is free, it's possible he heard a hypothetical "you'd do well at West Point" as an "offer of a full scholarship." But he exaggerated, at the very least.

  [Erick on the Radio / Erick Erickson]

• (For the record, one does not apply to West Point; one seeks a nomination from one's elected representatives in Congress.)

  [U.S. Military Academies]

• Then again, the man claimed yesterday that the Egyptian pyramids were actually used for grain storage, per the Biblical story of Joseph. That's probably a more consequential fib than the West Point thing.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

Everybody gets a Supreme Court hearing!

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• The Supreme Court agreed to hear another batch of cases dealing with how religious nonprofits operate under the Affordable Care Act's mandate to provide birth control.

  [Vox / Emily Crockett]

• If you're getting deja vu, you're not alone. The court addressed this in 2014, when it ruled, in the Hobby Lobby decision, that some employers could exempt themselves from paying for employees' birth control for religious reasons.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

• The religious nonprofits in the current court case, however, don't believe they should be forced to notify the government that they want to opt out of the mandate. They want a preemptive exemption from it — which the ACA does grant to churches.

  [SCOTUSblog / Lyle Denniston]

• What's odd about these cases — other than the fact that they're the fourth time in five years the court is hearing an ACA challenge — is that the court appears to have decided to grant a hearing to seven cases dealing with the same issue.

  [Kannon Shanmugam via Twitter]

• That leaves seven different lawyers who could argue the case. The court has literally told them to fight it out among themselves.

  [Supreme Court of the United States]

MISCELLANEOUS

When I (Dylan) first moved to DC, I would've loved a "dorm for grownups." Now it's really happening. [The Atlantic / Alana Semuels]

• The Supreme Court has an opportunity to gut public employee unions this term — but Antonin Scalia could be the one that stops it.

  [Bloomberg / Josh Eidelson]

• Economics Nobel winner Angus Deaton's first op-ed since his win is wonderfully titled "Statistical objectivity is a cloak spun from political yarn."

  [FT / Angus Deaton]

• Barack Obama Elementary School in Hempstead, NY was the first school in the country to name itself after the president. Here's how that connection has changed the mostly black and Latino school.

  [Washington Post / William Wan]

• New York Times versus the Minnesota apple industry is the fight we, as a nation, deserve.

  [Star Tribune / Connie Nelson]

VERBATIM

"New Haven Police Call Off Plan To Take Valuables Out Of Unlocked Cars" [NBC Connecticut / Justin Schecker]

• "In a predictably quirky twist, every character in the film besides Lisa and Michael is voiced by a monotone Tom Noonan."

  [AV Club / Katie Rife]

• "The Padme Theory just states what the evidence before our eyes should lead us to believe: that Anakin was always a sociopath, that everyone around him knew it and that Padme took one for the team, allowing him to believe that his inept attempts at courtship were working and feeding information about his activities to Obi Wan and others who could help keep him under control."

  [Washington Post / Alexandra Petri]

• "Eager to demonstrate urgency and vigor in his campaign, Jeb Bush seems to be testing a new tool: gentle profanity."

  [NYT / Matt Flegenheimer]

• "To prevent the candidates from talking over the moderators, or each other, Smith said that the debate would have very clear guidelines. When asked what that meant, Smith seemed perplexed. 'We have a buzzer,' she said. 'Yeah, we have a buzzer,' Bartiromo seconded."

  [IB Times / Brendan James]

WATCH THIS

James Bond’s espionage career, in one map [YouTube / Phil Edwards and Estelle Caswell]

Vox / Phil Edwards and Estelle Caswell