The Commentariat -- February 4

President Obama made a statement about Egypt this afternoon:

     ... At 2:35 min. into the video below, President Obama takes only one question, that one coming from Reuters's Alister Bull:

     ... Here's Politico's liveblog of the presser. The full press conference is here, but you'll get the meat of it from the excerpts above:

Noam Chomsky in the Guardian: it isn't radical Islam that worries U.S. leaders -- it's independence; the U.S. supports the regimes that support us.

Maram Mazen, a Bloomberg reporter who was on vacation in her native Cairo, is set upon by plainclothesmen & police. A policeman tells her, "You will be lynched." Video.

Christiane Amanpour interviews Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman:

     ... Here's Amanpour's print report on the interview.

Nicholas Kristof reports again from Tahrir Square in Cairo with vivid descriptions like this: "As I arrived near the square in the morning, I encountered a line of Mr. Mubarak’s goons carrying wooden clubs with nails embedded in them." Here's a video report from Kristof:

New York Times Editors: Egyptian President Hosni "Mubarak’s attempt to blame the opposition and foreigners for the mayhem ... is patently absurd.... Mr. Mubarak has lost the legitimacy to continue governing Egypt, but he has chosen survival over his people.... An important question is what role the army — which gets nearly $1.5 billion in annual American aid — is prepared to play.... Egypt and its people need a quick transition to an era of greater political and economic freedoms. The violence is making that transition harder." Here's Christiane Amanpour's report of her interview of Mubarak, which the Editors mention:

... Here's a related story by Amanpour. ...

... Rachel Maddow explains the Mubarak strategy of violence & why his paid "demonstrators" are attacking journalists:

... Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "... as the crisis in Egypt has intensified this week, elevating foreign affairs above domestic political skirmishes, the potential Republican candidates and the party’s leaders in Congress have, with only a few exceptions, had little to say.... The lack of debate underscores the relative absence of muscular Republican voices on foreign affairs in general." CW: biggest loudmouth: the Newt.

Zachary Goldfarb & Brady Dennis of the Washington Post: "The Obama administration is likely to recommend reducing the size of mortgages eligible for government backing..., a move that could make getting a home loan in high-priced areas ... more expensive.... The proposal to let the higher limits lapse is among the most concrete elements in [a] long-awaited review, which examines various options for reshaping the role government plays in the mortgage finance market."

Robert Reich in Salon on House Republican budget cuts: "They discovered the job of tackling the budget will be far bigger and tougher than it looked from the far end of the campaign trail. Americans don't want big spending cuts. They want to cut what doesn't work. And now congressional Republicans have got to explain this to the Tea Partiers, who are still howling and yelling."

Betty Friedan & unidentified 1960s-era "housewife." New Yorker art.CW: Today is the fifth anniversary of feminist Betty Friedan's death & the 90th anniversary of her birthday. Last week I linked to this New Yorker article by Louis Menand on the impact of Friedan's 1963 book The Feminine Mystique. To celebrate the advances in women's rights that Friedan espoused & helped inspire, Sunday night at 10 pm ET (right after the Super Bowl!) PBS is airing a documentary about Nancy Reagan, who just said no to feminism, too. Emily Bazelon has a review of the PBS special here. So, Republicans, you wanna wait till after the Nancy Reagan Show to eliminate that PBS funding?

Local News

You are voting for the first time in the history of our state to codify discrimination into our constitution. -- Zach Wahls ...

... Zach Wahls, a 19-year-old student, speaks before the Iowa legislature against a resolution to end civil unions in the state. It's an amazing speech in every way:

Stephen Colbert comments on Ohio Gov. John Kasich's all-white cabinet:

... CW: in case you were wondering, Kasich is a Republican. It isn't his fault. He only knows white people.

News Ledes

President Obama met with Canadian PM Stephen Harper, this afternoon. They held a joint press conference. AP: "President Barack Obama on Friday appealed to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to begin an orderly process to relinquish the power he has held for 30 years. But Obama stopped short of calling for Mubarak's immediate resignation. 'My hope is he will end up making the right decision,' Obama said...." Washington Post story here. See videos of statement above. ...

... AP: "President Barack Obama will take questions from reporters Friday on the continuing violence in Egypt during what may be a pivotal day in the crisis, as anti-government demonstrators aim to escalate their street protests. Obama and members of his administration are edging closer to blaming the government of authoritarian President Hosni Mubarak ... for the violent clashes in Cairo." ...

... AP: "U.S. intelligence agencies are drawing criticism from the Oval Office and Capitol Hill that they failed to warn of revolts in Egypt and the downfall of an American ally in Tunisia. President Barack Obama has told National Intelligence Director James Clapper that he was 'disappointed with the intelligence community' over its failure to predict the outbreak of demonstrations would lead to the ouster of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunis...." ...

... New York Times: "Defying a wider government crackdown, tens of thousands of Egyptians packed Cairo’s central Tahrir Square on Friday, chanting slogans, bowing in prayer and waving Egyptian flags to press a campaign for the removal of President Hosni Mubarak that has transfixed the Arab world and tested American diplomacy." Story has been updated; the new lede: "Cracks in the Egyptian establishments’s support for President Hosni Mubarak began to appear Friday as jubilant crowds of hundreds of thousands packed the capitol’s central Tahrir Square to call for his ouster, this time unmolested by either security police or uniformed Mubarak loyalists."

New York Times: "A lawsuit brought by the trustee for the victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme accuses the owners of the Mets of being so enamored of the enormous profits they earned while investing over decades with Mr. Madoff that they ignored repeated and specific warnings that he might have been operating a fraud. The lawsuit, unsealed in federal bankruptcy court in Manhattan on Friday morning, contends that the team’s owners, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, used the profits from their investments in Madoff to establish personal fortunes, create dozens of family trusts and financially fuel their array of businesses, from the Mets to real estate to the creation of a cable sports network."

New York Times: "The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, warned Congressional Republicans on Thursday not to 'play around with' a coming vote to raise the government’s legal borrowing limit or use it as a bargaining chip for spending cuts.... It was the first time that Mr. Bernanke, who in contrast to his predecessors has avoided taking sides in partisan debates on fiscal matters, had spoken out on the debt ceiling issue."

Politico: "Mark Kelly, husband of wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, will fly the space shuttle Endeavour's final mission in April, according to a source familiar with the decision. Kelly and NASA are expected to make an announcement at a press conference Friday." AP update here.

Hattiesburg (Mississippi) American: "A federal judge has dismissed part of a lawsuit filed by Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant and 10 other Mississippians challenging the constitutionality of the health care reform law. U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett, in a 23-page decision handed down Thursday, said Bryant and the other plaintiffs did not have standing to file the lawsuit."

The Commentariat -- February 3

A Thousand Words. Camel tramples journalist in Tahrir Square Wednesday. Via Andrew Sullivan. Robert Springborg of Foreign Policy explains why the chance for democracy in Egypt is over. ...

... CW: Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution comments on Springborg's post. I think Bookman gets it exactly right vis-a-vis Obama: "... the Egyptian military wields a lot more power and influence over affairs in Egypt than anybody else on the planet, including the president of the United States, and it has used that power very cleverly. It is very difficult if not impossible for outsiders to overcome that, and it’s not even clear how hard they should try." ...

... Helene Cooper, et al., of the New York Times: "After days of delicate public and private diplomacy, the United States openly broke with its most stalwart ally in the Arab world on Wednesday, as the Obama administration strongly condemned violence by allies of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt against protesters and called on him to speed up his exit from power. Egypt’s government hit back swiftly. The Foreign Ministry released a defiant statement saying the calls from “foreign parties” had been “rejected and aimed to incite the internal situation in Egypt.” ...

... Michael Martinez of CNN: "In Egypt, Vice President Omar Suleiman issued a statement saying that dialogue with opposition forces, as ordered by Mubarak, won't begin until the demonstrations stop. Mubarak had incited another round of protests Tuesday when he said he would wait until the September elections to step down.... Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has begun a round of discussions with Suleiman as the Egyptian government has begun defending the pace of change and pushing back against American criticism...."

... CW: if you think the Egyptian army is on the side of the protesters, read Wendell Steavenson of the New Yorker who describes an encounter with a general at a makeshift first aid station in Cairo.

... ** Nicholas Kristof has a compelling and disturbing report from Tahrir Square in Cairo:

This was an organized government crackdown, but it relied on armed hoodlums, not on police or army troops. The pro-Mubarak forces arrived in busloads.... It should be increasingly evident that Mr. Mubarak is not the remedy for the instability in Egypt; he is its cause.

... Kristof interviews pro-Mubarak demonstrators in Cairo:

... George Packer of the New Yorker: "Administration policy in Egypt has allowed Mubarak to crush the few remaining pockets of breathing space for civil society and the political opposition. It’s a policy that goes back decades, one that neither Obama nor George W. Bush did much to change. The dramatic events of the past week have shown it to be an utter failure."

... Say What? Chris McGreal of the Guardian: "Tony Blair has described Hosni Mubarak ... as 'immensely courageous and a force for good' and warned against a rush to elections that could bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power. The former prime minister, now an envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, praised Mubarak over his role in the negotiations and said the west was right to back him despite his authoritarian regime because he had maintained peace with Israel."

... Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post: "As it braces for the likelihood of a new ruler in Egypt, the U.S. government is rapidly reassessing its tenuous relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, an opposition movement whose fundamentalist ideology has long been a source of distrust in Washington." ...

... Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times profiles Amb. Frank Wisner, the diplomat President Obama sent to Egypt to talk with government leaders there. Wisner left Egypt Wednesday.

Diana Henriques of the New York Times: "Senior executives at JPMorgan Chase expressed serious doubts about the legitimacy of Bernard L. Madoff’s investment business more than 18 months before his Ponzi scheme collapsed but continued to do business with him, according to internal bank documents made public in a lawsuit on Thursday."

Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today on 'The Constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act,' President Ronald Reagan’s former Solicitor General — Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried — tore into the reasoning of Judge Roger Vinson’s decision striking down the Affordable Care Act, saying the issue should be a 'no brainer'”:

... AND Neera Tanden & Millhiser write a line-by-line interactive rebuttal to Judge Vinson's declaratory judgment. In their overview, they write:

... we show how he effectively writes an entire provision of the Constitution out of the document. How he butchers history, thumbs his nose at binding Supreme Court precedent, and relies on a constitutional theory that George Washington would find shocking. As we explain, even conservative legal scholars have questioned Vinson’s reasoning. And he wholly misunderstands health care and how it works.

... Dahlia Lithwick in Slate: the "psychology" of the members of the Supreme Court is becoming more important than precedent as right-wing justices pretzel even their own previous opinions to fit their ideology.

Dana Milbank: Rand Paul uses his maiden Senate speech to defame Sen. Henry Clay, known as the Great Compromiser & one of Kentucky's favorite sons. Clay died in 1852 so he wasn't there to defend himself.

Hope Yen of the AP: "U.S. racial minorities accounted for roughly 85 percent of the nation's population growth over the last decade — one of the largest shares ever — with Hispanics accounting for much of the gain in many of the states picking up new House seats."

News Items

** New York Times: "The Obama administration is discussing with Egyptian officials a proposal for President Hosni Mubarak to resign immediately, turning over power to a transitional government headed by Vice President Omar Suleiman with the support of the Egyptian military.... Even though Mr. Mubarak has balked..., officials from both governments are continuing talks about a plan in which, Mr. Suleiman, backed by Sami Enan, chief of the Egyptian armed forces, and Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, the Defense Minister, would immediately begin a process of constitutional reform."

ABC News: "A group of angry Egyptian men carjacked an ABC News crew and threatened to behead them today in the latest and most menacing attack on foreign reporters trying to cover the anti-government uprising."  Time: "Sources have told TIME Magazine that Lara Logan, chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News, has been detained along with her crew by Egyptian police outside Cairo's Israeli embassy." ABC News has a list of journalists who have been threatened, attacked or detained by Egyptian security forces. It's a long list. Washington Post: "In multiple incidents, journalists covering Egypt's unrest were pummeled, hit with pepper spray, shouted at and threatened by loyalists to President Hosni Mubarak. The Committee to Protect Journalists described .. a series of deliberate attacks. The New York-based CPJ called on the Egyptian military to provide protection for reporters." ...

... AP: "Protesters and government supporters fought in a second day of rock-throwing battles at a central Cairo square while more lawlessness spread around the city. New looting and arson erupted, and gangs of thugs supporting President Hosni Mubarak attacked reporters, foreigners and rights workers while the army rounded up foreign journalists."

... New York Times: "Security forces and gangs chanting in favor of the Egyptian government hunted down journalists at their offices and in the hotels where many had taken refuge on Thursday in a widespread and overt campaign of intimidation aimed at suppressing reports from the capital.... The cellphone service provider Vodafone acknowledged that the government had invoked emergency powers to force it to send out text messages. Some of the messages appeared to include calls for people to turn out in support of the government, and were sent before the violent clashes." ...

... AP: "President Barack Obama's response to the crisis in Egypt is drawing fierce criticism in Israel, where many view the U.S.leader as a political naif whose pressure on a stalwart ally to hand over power is liable to backfire." ...

... New York Times: "... protesters seeking the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak regrouped at Tahrir Square on Thursday after a night of gunfire and a day of mayhem that left at least five dead and more than 800 wounded in a battle for the Middle East’s most populous nation." ...

... New York Times: "The online group Anonymous said Wednesday that it had paralyzed the Egyptian government’s Web sites in support of the antigovernment protests. Anonymous, a loosely defined group of hackers from all over the world, gathered about 500 supporters in online forums and used software tools to bring down the sites of the Ministry of Information and President Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party.... The sites were unavailable Wednesday afternoon." ...

... From the State Department, via Politico: ""Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Egyptian Vice President Omar Soliman today [Wednesday and] ... urged that the Government of Egypt hold accountable those who were responsible for violent acts."

AP: Rep. Rubén Hinojosa (D-Texas), who serves "on the House Financial Services Committee, has filed for personal bankruptcy." Evidently availed himself of a few too many financial services. Update: Politico has more.

Washington Post: "A Senate investigation into the Fort Hood shooting faults the Army and FBI for missing warning signs and failing to exchange information that could have prevented the massacre.... [Sen. Joe] Lieberman said that the report ... indicated that the FBI had compelling evidence of extremism that should have led to [Maj. Nidal] Hasan's military discharge and made him the subject of a counterterrorism investigation." 

AP: "Republicans controlling the House promised Thursday to slash domestic agencies' spending by almost 20 percent in their drive to bring it back to levels in place before President Barack Obama took office.House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan announced the move as the first salvo in a battle with Obama as they seek to keep a campaign promise to cut $100 billion from domestic programs."

Politico: GOP backtracks; deletes "forcible" qualifier from its definition of rape in its anti-abortion bill.

New York Times: "Thousands of pro- and antigovernment demonstrators held peaceful protests" in [Sana, Yemen].

New York Times: "Kenneth R. Feinberg, the administrator of the $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, should not claim that he is fully independent of BP, a federal judge overseeing litigation against the company ruled on Wednesday. Judge Carl J. Barbier of Federal District Court in New Orleans ... issued an order in [which he] said [Feinberg] must make clear to potential litigants that he is 'acting for and on behalf of BP in fulfilling its legal obligations.'”

The Commentariat -- February 2

** A History Lesson. Jack Balkin: "All able bodied male citizens were part of the militia, and therefore were required to bear arms in defense of the state. In fact, the federal government passed a militia act in 1792 that required that every citizen purchase a weapon and ammunition.... Hence citizens were automatically made part of the militia, and this mean that they might be called upon to lay down their lives for their fellow citizens and the republic.... What is lost in the debate over the individual mandate is that the point of the individual mandate is also civic republican in nature. It requires citizens to make a far less significant but also public-spirited sacrifice on behalf of other Americans who cannot afford health insurance." Via Ben Smith.

It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place. -- Judge Roger Vinson, in his ruling against the Affordable Care Act

On first read, the most striking aspect of Judge Vinson’s ruling today is not its remedy — striking the Affordable Care Act in its entirety — but the impression one gets that the opinion was written in part as a Tea Party manifesto. -- Mark Hall, law professor

CW: here's the immediate problem with Vinson's irresponsible ruling. Amy Goldstein & N. C. Aizenman of the Washington Post: there is "... striking disagreement over the ruling's practical effects, even for the states in which the decision has the greatest direct impact." The New York Times has a story on the same subject here. Some of these right-wing ideological governors & attorneys general plan to cut people out of ACA-mandated programs now. Assholes. ...

... BUT Richard Alonso-Zaldivar of the AP: "Most insurers, hospital executives and state officials expect they'll keep carrying out President Barack Obama's health care overhaul even after a federal judge cast its fate in doubt by declaring all of it unconstitutional." ...

... Ezra Klein interviews economist Mark Pauly, who first proposed the individual mandate to the Bush I administration, & which went on to be "promoted by congressional Republicans, the Heritage Foundation, and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney." Pauly says his "fix" for the bouhaha over the individual mandate "would be to simply say raise everyone’s taxes by what a health insurance policy would cost -- Congress definitely has the power to do that -- and then tell people that if they obtain insurance, they'll get a tax break of the same amount." ...

... Alexander Bolton of The Hill: "Democratic and Republican lawmakers believe the Supreme Court will ultimately decide the fate of President Obama’s healthcare law, and some of them are already exerting pressure on the justices.... Republicans want the case to reach the Supreme Court swiftly. The Obama administration, however, is in no rush for it...."

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan. Photos via Salon.Our Favorite Dictators. Alex Pareene of Salon on "where else in the world American taxpayer dollars are helping to prop up dictatorships with poor human rights records."

Mark Landler, et. al., of the New York Times: "The story of how Mr. Mubarak, an Arab autocrat who only last month was the mainstay of America’s policy in a turbulent region, suddenly found himself pushed toward the exit is first and foremost a tale of the Arab street.... But it is also one of political calculations, in Cairo and Washington, which were upset repeatedly as the crowds swelled. And it is the story of a furious scramble by the Obama White House — right up until Mr. Obama’s call Tuesday night for change to begin 'now' — to catch up with a democracy movement unfolding so rapidly that Washington came close to being left behind." ...

... Wall Street Journal reporters on how the U.S. & Egyptian governments were blindsided by the strength & persistence Egyptian uprising. CW: What isn't in the headline, but is in the report is acknowledgment that the protest leaders themselves were surprised at the success of the protest. ...

Tony Karon of Time: "... for all the words uttered Tuesday, the terms and duration of the political transition will not be decided by either Mubarak or the opposition.... The outcome of their battle of wills may be decided by other actors, first and foremost the country's armed forces." Read Karon on new Veep Suleiman's role in the "transition": Karon backs up my seat-of-the-pants take on the "Plan B" Mubarak & Suleiman have been engineering.

Politico: "A member of Norway’s parliament has nominated WikiLeaks for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize."

Luke Harding of the Guardian: "Police brutality in Egypt is 'routine and pervasive' and the use of torture so widespread that the Egyptian government has stopped denying it exists, according to leaked cables released today by WikiLeaks. The batch of US embassy cables paint a despairing portrait of a police force and security service in Egypt wholly out of control. They suggest torture is routinely used against ordinary criminals, Islamist detainees, opposition activists and bloggers." Read the documents here. ...

... Greg Jaffe and Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "A mental health specialist recommended that the [Bradley Manning] ... not be deployed to Iraq, but his immediate commanders sent him anyway, according to a military official familiar with a new Army investigation."

John Schwartz & Mark Schrope of the New York Times: "The Gulf of Mexico should recover from the environmental damage caused by the enormous" BP oil spill last year faster than many people expected, according to new estimates in reports commissioned by Kenneth R. Feinberg, the administrator of the $20 billion compensation fund.  That prediction will be central to Mr. Feinberg’s plan for paying people who claim their livelihoods were devastated by the spill. It is certain to be controversial among those who believe the damage will be longer-lasting and therefore should result in higher payouts for the spill’s victims." CW: speaking of dictators, I'm not sure Feinberg is so benevolent.

Dina ElBodhdady of the Washington Post: "A record number of homeowners are kicking in cash when they refinance their mortgages, in most cases to qualify for interest rates that are now near historic lows, mortgage financier Freddie Mac reported this week. In the fourth quarter, 46 percent of borrowers who refinanced their primary mortgages brought cash to settlement to lower the balance on their loans, Freddie Mac said. That's the highest share of so-called 'cash-in' refinances since the company started tracking the numbers in 1985." CW: this is a good thing.

Dana Milbank isn't convinced Jay Carney, who will become President Obama's press secretary, is going to be as press-friendly as, well, the press thinks he'll be. Milbank cites as evidence an "official" e-mail he received from Carney while Carney was working for Vice President Biden: "'You are a hack.' ... The body of the message began with the phrase 'shamelessly misrepresented,' continued on to refer to 'your hackneyed storyline' and concluded: 'Fabrication is a legitimate tool - for fiction. You should try it; it suits you.'"

And now, for a history lesson from the Tea Party, brought to you by Tom Tomorrow, observer of "This Modern World":

FOR A SLIGHTLY LARGER IMAGE, CLICK ON THE CARTOON.

News Items

New York Times: "Senate Democrats on Wednesday defeated a bid by Republicans to repeal last year’s sweeping health care overhaul, as they successfully mounted a party-line defense of President Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement.... Lawmakers in both parties joined forces, however, to repeal a tax provision in the law that would impose a huge information-reporting requirement on small businesses. That vote was 81 to 17, with 34 Democrats and all 47 Republicans in favor."

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Calling the move risky, Sen. Claire McCaskill introduced on Tuesday anti-deficit legislation that could impose automatic cuts in Social Security and other entitlement programs. McCaskill, of Missouri, was the only Democrat to join with a group of Republicans to press for a far-reaching debt reduction plan that would tie federal spending to the nation's economic output."

Washington Post: "After months of resistance, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) announced Tuesday that he will enforce a ban on earmarks in all Senate spending bills, ending a cherished practice by lawmakers that had become a symbol of wasteful excess. The Senate moratorium, which will remain in place for two years, follows a similar move by the GOP-led House and a veto threat by President Obama in his State of the Union address last week."

The Hill: Darrell Issa "says the White House’s response to his first major request for documents and records was inadequate. As a result, [he] is refining his request and asking for copies of e-mails between key White House officials. He is also seeking a series of interviews with top-level staff at the Department of Homeland Security...."

New York Times: "Government-subsidized health insurance – one of many perks of serving in Congress – kicked in on Tuesday for new members. But a group of more than a dozen freshman Republicans who campaigned vigorously on overturning President Obama’s new health care law will be opting out."

President Obama signed the New START treaty this morning. No link.

New York Times: "Egypt’s powerful military signaled a shift on Wednesday, calling on protesters who have propelled tumultuous changes here to 'restore normal life.' On the streets, the tactics and calculations seemed to be shifting too, possibly spurring the military’s concern as pro-Mubarak demonstrators — some of them in apparently confrontational mood — turned out in larger numbers than in the past days of antigovernment tumult. By the early afternoon, a potentially combustible mood seized Tahrir Square as hundreds of pro-Mubarak protesters converged on what has been the epicenter of the antigovernment demonstrations." ...

... AP: "Hundreds of pro-government supporters attacked protesters Wednesday in Cairo's central square, where thousands were pushing ahead with demonstrations demanding the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. ...

... NBC News Update: "Several thousand supporters of embattled President Hosni Mubarak, including some on horses and camels and wielding whips, charged into a crowd of anti-government protesters Wednesday, instigating violent clashes as Egypt's upheaval took a dangerous new turn." ...

... New York Times Update: "As chaos gripped Cairo’s central Tahrir square on Wednesday, journalists covering the scene on the ground found themselves the targets of violence and intimidation by demonstrators chanting slogans in favor of President Hosni Mubarak. One prominent American television correspondent, Anderson Cooper of CNN, was struck in the head repeatedly." See video above.

New York Times: "President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen said on Wednesday that he would not run for re-election when his term ends in 2013, a stunning concessions to protesters that marked yet another reverberation of the anger that has rocked the Arab World. Mr. Saleh, an American ally who has been in office for 32 years, also said that his eldest son, Ahmed, who heads the elite Republican Guard, would not seek the presidency, as government opponents had feared."