The Commentariat -- February 1

Tahrir Square, Cairo, February 1. CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE.

For the first time in Egyptian history, from the pharaohs till now, Egypt is having a real revolution. -- Man in Tahrir Square

I think the Tunisia [uprising] was at least fueled by [the release of WikiLeaks documents]. The accepted version of how things happened in Tunisia was that a fruit seller who was mistreated by the government set himself on fire, and this began an uprising.... That all seems to be true, but it also seems to be true that the circulation of the WikiLeaks documents that talked about how the Ben Ali regime lived high off the hog ... clearly did circulate widely, and if it didn't start what happened in Tunisia, it certainly fueled it. -- Bill Keller, New York Times Executive Editor ...

     ... Read excerpts from an NPR "Fresh Air" interview of Keller conducted by Terry Gross. The audio will also be available at this link later today (Tuesday).

Paul Kane & Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "Congress has taken an unusually bipartisan approach toward the mounting crisis in Egypt, with House and Senate leaders standing behind the Obama administration's message that Egyptians should make an 'orderly transition' to avoid a violent conclusion to the week-long standoff." ...

... CW: then I guess this is the Congressional consensus. John Kerry, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a New York Times op-ed: "President Hosni Mubarak must accept that the stability of his country hinges on his willingness to step aside gracefully to make way for a new political structure." ...

... Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post: "The Obama administration, after initially underestimating the force and determination of anti-government demonstrations in Egypt, appeared Monday to have settled on a public and private course of action that officials hope will lead to President Hosni Mubarak's departure from office sooner rather than later. Senior officials moved to further define the 'orderly transition' they called for over the weekend, and made clear in public statements that they were not impressed by the steps Mubarak has taken to respond to the protests." ...

... Tony Karon of Time: "Monday's announcement by the Egyptian army that it recognized the 'legitimacy' of the demonstrators' demands and refused to use force to disperse them (despite their protest being illegal under existing laws) could mark a turning point in the popular rebellion aimed at bringing down" Mubarak." ...

... Helene Cooper & Scott Shane of the New York Times: Mohamed "ElBaradei ... had a fractious relationship with the Bush administration, one so hostile that Bush officials tried to get him removed from his post at the atomic watchdog agency. But as Egypt’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood and the secular opposition on the streets of Cairo have increasingly coalesced around Mr. ElBaradei to negotiate on their behalf, the Obama administration is scrambling to figure out whether he is someone with whom the United States can deal." ...

     ... CW: but what about this, from cooper & Shane's report? -- "Since the protests in Egypt erupted, Obama administration officials have been trying to reach Mr. ElBaradei, but they had not made contact as of Monday afternoon." How is it that Bob Scheiffer & Fareed Zakaria could have ElBaradei on air, but the State Department can't find him? ...

... Mark Landler of the New York Times: "The Obama administration has sent [former Ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner,] a diplomatic troubleshooter with close ties to Egypt, on a mission to Cairo to meet with President Hosni Mubarak and other senior officials, as the administration struggles to gauge Mr. Mubarak’s intentions amid the fast-moving events there.... The choice of Mr. Wisner, 72, a respected elder of the foreign policy establishment, raised questions about whether the administration was using him as an emissary to gently prod Mr. Mubarak to resign. Administration officials declined to say whether they had sent Mr. Wisner with any kind of message." ...

... Dan Lyons in the Daily Beast: "Hours after the government in Egypt shut down that country’s access to the Internet, hackers around the world started banding together to craft some kind of workaround. And one group claims to be only a day or two away from delivering a partial solution. Their initiative is called the Open Mesh Project and it began when Shervin Pishevar, an Internet entrepreneur in Palo Alto, California, posted a message on Twitter calling for help...." ...

... Google: "Over the weekend we came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service—the ability for anyone to tweet using just a voice connection. We worked with a small team of engineers from Twitter, Google and SayNow.... Anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on one of these international phone numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855) and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt. No Internet connection is required. People can listen to the messages by dialing the same phone numbers or going to twitter.com/speak2tweet." ...

... Jon Stewart assesses U.S.-Egyptian relations:

... Of course Stephen Colbert supports Mubarak:

Worried about the Egyptian protests? Well, according to Fox "News," you should be because the protesters are radical, Al Qaeda-sponsoring, Jihadist suicide-bombing terroist theocrats. Thanks to the Salon staff for putting together this Montage a Faux:

Stan Collender of Roll Call puts the $1.5 trillion budget deficit in perspective & says the breathless news coverage of the CBO's projection was wa-a-a-y over the top: "

The CBO report was not news because it did nothing more than confirm what was completely understood when the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization and Job Creation Act of 2010 was negotiated, debated, passed and signed into law last year. A small story on Page 37 (Is there still a Page 37 in any section of a newspaper these days?) would have been understandable. But there was nothing that justified the front-page, above-the-fold treatment the projection received. Six tax cuts and an extension of unemployment benefits were enacted in December, and the known budget effect of each was to — wait for it — increase the deficit.

** Jason Linkins on H.R. 3, the House Republicans' anti-abortion law, which will severely limit the definition of rape. Linkins charges that the bill's authors hold "the deep and abiding belief among its cosponsors that women are chattel." CW: I won't argue with that.

John Broder of the New York Times: "When he releases his new budget in two weeks, President Obama will propose doing away with roughly $4 billion a year in subsidies and tax breaks for oil companies, in his third effort to eliminate federal support for an industry that remains hugely profitable.... But ... his policies continue to provide for substantial aid to oil and gas companies as well as billions of dollars in subsidies for coal, nuclear and other energy sources with large and long-lasting environmental impacts."

Truthout has serialized Thom Hartmann's book Rebooting the American Dream. Here's the last chapter, in which Hartman concludes:

Our economy is in tatters, the result of more than 30 years of Reaganomics and Clintonomics. Our democracy is hanging by a thread, the result of 40 years of radical Supreme Court decisions steadily advancing the powers of corporations and suppressing the rights of individuals and their government. And our environment is trembling....

     ... You can link to all of the chapters here.

David Sanger & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "New American intelligence assessments have concluded that Pakistan has steadily expanded its nuclear arsenal since President Obama came to office, and that it is building the capability to surge ahead in the production of nuclear-weapons material, putting it on a path to overtake Britain as the world’s fifth largest nuclear weapons power. For the Obama administration, the assessment poses a direct challenge to a central element of the president’s national security strategy, the reduction of nuclear stockpiles around the world."

New York Times Editors: "... the federal Office of Special Counsel found that the Bush White House routinely violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits most federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity. It depicts the Bush Office of Political Affairs, run by Karl Rove, as virtually indistinguishable from the Republican Party.... The Office of Special Counsel does not have the power to discipline former government employees, and it is not clear that any law enforcement agency will look into prosecution.... The Office of Political Affairs should be abolished...."

Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: "Barbara Bush, one of the twin daughters of George W. Bush, will endorse same-sex arriage< on Tuesday, publicly breaking ranks with a father who, as president, pushed for a constitutional amendment banning such unions":

Nelson Schwartz of the New York Times: "It was a tough year for Bank of America, what with the foreclosure mess and a sagging stock price. Its chief executive, Brian T. Moynihan, nonetheless received $10 million in his first year on the job."

Roger Vinson, Extreme Activist Judge. Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo: "Vinson tossed the entire [Affordable Care Act] because it lacked a 'severability clause,' which would have compartmentalized the legislation itself and forced judges to weigh individual sections on their own merits. But the standard is not that an unseverable law should be stricken in its entirety. Noted liberal activist judge John Roberts recently struck a sole provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley law, which likewise lacks a severability clause." ...

... Jonathan Cohn: in his illogical, ideological ruling, Judge Vinson gives the Tea Party a shout-out & tosses the conservative mantra of "judicial restraint." ...

... Orrin Kerr, who knows everything about Constitutional law, explains how Vinson's arguments about the commerce clause & the necessary-and-proper clause defy Supreme Court decisions. ...

... BUT Kerr's colleague ato the Volokh Conspiracy Ilya Somen really, really disagrees. ...

... Kate Pickert of Time writing on the same subject: even recent precedent suggests the Supremes will rule that the Affordable Care Act is Constitutional. ...

... Stephanie Cutter of the White House: "Today’s ruling – issued by Judge Vinson in the Northern District of Florida – is a plain case of judicial overreaching. The judge’s decision contradicts decades of Supreme Court precedent." ...

... Igor Volsky of Think Progress: Judge Vinson based a central part of his argument on a Family Research Council brief. ...

... Melissa Nelson & Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the AP: "In one of Vinson's more high-profile trials, he ruled against medical benefits for thousands of military veterans. ... [Their attorney ] argued the veterans were promised lifetime care by recruiters when they enlisted and that military health benefits shouldn't stop at age 65. The ruling was later overturned by an appeals courts."

News Items

Guardian: "The British government is under pressure to take up the case of Bradley Manning, the soldier being held in a maximum security military prison in Virginia..., on the grounds that he is a UK citizen.... Manning is a UK citizen by descent from his Welsh mother, Susan. Government databases on births, deaths and marriages show she was born Susan Fox in Haverfordwest in 1953."

President Obama just spoke (6:45-6:50 pm ET) in support of "an orderly transition" in Egypt. Here's a synopsis from Politico. Washington Post story here. From the White House, here's the text of the speech. Update: New York Times story here. AND here's the speech:

Mubarak says he won't seek another term. New York Times story here. Story has been updated. Protesters say Mubarak's concessions don't go far enough. ...

... New York Times: "President Obama has told the embattled president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, that he should not run for another term in elections in the fall, effectively withdrawing American support for its closest Arab ally, according to American diplomats in Cairo and Washington." ...

...  AP: "More than a quarter-million people flooded Cairo's main square Tuesday in a stunning and jubilant array of young and old, urban poor and middle class professionals, mounting by far the largest protest yet in a week of unrelenting demands for President Hosni Mubarak to leave after nearly 30 years in power."

... New York Times: "... hundreds of thousands of people crammed into Cairo’s vast Tahrir Square on Tuesday, seeking to muster a million protesters demanding the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. Their mood was jubilant, as though they had achieved their goals, even though Mr. Mubarak remained in the presidency a day after the Egyptian military emboldened the protesters by saying they would not use force against them and the president’s most trusted advisor offered to negotiate with his adversaries." ...

... New York Times: "Egypt’s economy approached paralysis on Monday as foreign commerce, tourism and banking all but halted, placing acute pressure on President Hosni Mubarak to find a way out of the weeklong chaos." ...

... New York Times: China reacts to the Egyptian uprising by censoring the Web & news items which present the protests as the embodiment of "the pitfalls of trying to plant democracy in countries that are not quite ready for it — a line China’s leaders have long held."

NBC News: "Jordan's Royal Palace says the king has sacked his government in the wake of street protests and has asked an ex-army general to form a new Cabinet. King Abdullah's move comes after thousands of Jordanians took to the streets -- inspired by the regime ouster in Tunisia and the turmoil in Egypt -- and called for the resignation of Prime Minister Samir Rifai who is blamed for a rise in fuel and food prices and slowed political reforms. The Royal Palace says Rifai's Cabinet resigned on Tuesday." ...

... Reuters: "Jordan's King Abdullah on Tuesday asked his former ex-military adviser Marouf Bakhit to form a new cabinet, an official said." Update: the New York Times has more.

New York Times: "Hundreds of people packed into a downtown ballroom on Monday afternoon to watch Governor Patrick J. Quinn, a Democrat, sign a law making civil unions legal for same-sex couples in this state.... The law, which goes into effect on June 1, will provide same sex couples many legal protections now given to married couples, such as emergency medical decision-making powers, inheritance rights, pension benefits, adoption and parental rights, and the ability to share a room in a nursing home."

Washington Post: "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday introduced a measure aimed at repealing the national health care overhaul as an amendment to the first Senate bill of the new Congress. McConnell proposed the repeal measure as an amendment to a Federal Aviation Administration funding bill."

CNN: "Democrats have chosen Charlotte, North Carolina, as the host city for the 2012 Democratic National Convention." They'll announce the decision today. More expansive New York Times story here.

New York Times: "South Korea announced on Tuesday that it will hold military talks with North Korea next week — the first inter-Korean dialogue since a deadly artillery exchange in November — while President Lee Myung-bak said for the first time that a future summit meeting with Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, was a possibility."

AP: "American diplomats and other mission employees may not be safe in Iraq if the U.S. military leaves the volatile country at the end of the year as planned, according to a new report ... by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee."

The Commentariat -- January 31

Ezra Klein's view of what should happen if Florida Judge Roger Vinson's opinion that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional prevailed in the Supreme Court is similar to mine: extend Medicare, S-CHIP, etc. to cover most of the population. The problem of course is that we currently have a Congress that would not do so. Klein also notes the absurdity of a "legal theory currently in vogue in conservative circles ... [that] permits the government to establish a single-payer health-care system that every American pays into through payroll taxes and that wipes out the private insurance industry but forbids the government from administering a regulated market in which individuals purchase private insurance plans and pay a penalty if they can afford coverage but choose to delay buying it until they're sick...."

... Klein comments on the nature of Vinson's ruling: "The full ruling has a very Bush v. Gore feeling, as Vinson concedes that his position is activist in the extreme and a break from the court's usual preference for limited rulings, but says, in effect, that he's going to do it just this once." You can read Vinson's ruling here. ...

Steve Benen puts Vinson's ruling into perspective:

... two Republican-appointed federal district court judges have now found that the individual mandate -- an idea Republicans came up with -- is unconstitutional.... Let's not forget two other federal district court judges, appointed by Democratic presidents, came to the opposite conclusion.... Overall, about a dozen federal courts have dismissed challenges to the health care law. ...

... Suzy Khimm of The New Republic: "The Republican attorneys general who brought the lawsuit wanted an unabashedly right-wing judge to rule on the case, so they deliberately filed in a very conservative jurisdiction of the state. Vinson delivered." ...

... Backstory. New York Times: Judge Roger Vinson of Federal District Court in Pensacola, Florida "... ruled on Monday that it was unconstitutional for Congress to enact a health care law that requires Americans to obtain commercial insurance, evening the score at two-to-two in the lower courts as conflicting opinions begin their path to the Supreme Court."

Helena Cobban in Salon: "Pro-Israeli groups and individuals in Congress and the rest of the American political elite have worked hard, for decades now, to demean and marginalize the work of anyone who seeks to understand trends in the Arab world on their own terms. They sowed the wind of our government’s current, stunningly evident impotence regarding events in Egypt. Now we are reaping the whirlwind." ...

... David Kirkpatrick & Mona El-Naggar of the New York Times: in Egypt, "political organizers, many younger than 30, are taking the lead in efforts to topple a regime older than they are." ...

... Nicholas Kulish & Soaud Mekhennet of the New York Times: "For four days now, containers arriving on ships have been stacking up at [Alexandria,] Egypt’s largest port.... With distribution networks barely functioning and the Internet down since Thursday night, much of business in Egypt has nearly ground to a halt.... The political crisis could turn into a humanitarian one if the current economic paralysis continues." ...

... Peter Nicholas of the Los Angeles Times: "A tight-lipped White House is taking an even-handed approach to the crisis in Egypt, suggesting that President Mubarak might be able to hold onto power if he allows competitive elections and restores individual freedoms. But inside the Obama administration, there are signs that officials are preparing for a post-Mubarak era after three decades." ...

... Jeffrey Fleishman of the Los Angeles Times: "The Muslim Brotherhood..., the Arab world's largest Islamic organization..., is muting its religious message amid a popular revolt that is not driven by Islam or politics. The organization's strategy became more apparent Sunday when it announced support for opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei as a transitional president if the Mubarak government is toppled. The move was recognition that ElBaradei, a secularist with Western democratic principles, is the most potent symbol for change in a nation desperate for fresh voices." ...

... NEW. Nathan Brown, director of Middle Eastern Studies at Georgetown U., talks to Justin Elliott of Salon about the history & organization of the Muslim Brotherhood. As Elliott suggests, you won't hear this on Fox.

... Massimo Calabresi of Time: "Political change is not always what it seems in the Arab world.... From the Western perspective it is not clear whether to fret about it or to embrace it. In truth, Washington has to do both, since it has little or no control over the situation, especially in the most volatile of the uprisings, in Egypt." ...

... Karl Vick of Time: "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu firmly ordered his government not to comment on events in Egypt, but the headlines in the Sunday morning papers got the main point across well enough: 'A 30-Year Step Backward,' 'What Frightens Us,' 'All Alone.' ... Egypt under President Hosni Mubarak observed the 1979 peace treaty with the Jewish state, helped put pressure on Hamas from Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip, nursed peace talks with the Palestinians, worked to thwart Iran and along the way provided Israel with 40% of its natural gas."

... Looks as if the Blue Texan at Firedoglake has been reading the right-wing blogs so we don't have to. Here's her/his post on the five stupidest things right-wingers have written about the Egyptian uprising. Oh, they're stupid. ...

... If you're wondering why you don't get Al Jazeera-English on your cable, Ryan Grim has the answer. Meanwhile, you can watch it here.

Dexter Filkins, now of the New Yorker, on the failure of Kabul Bank. New York Times story by Alissa Rubin & James Risen here. ...

... Joe Klein of Time: "The answer, I think, is bail out Kabul Bank, but only if Karzai steps aside in favor of Abdullah Abdullah, who finished second in the rigged presidential election -- or a respected technocrat like Ashraf Ghani, who could lead a caretaker government until new elections are held."

Whatever happened to Barack Obama's longstanding enthusiasm for curbing global warming? Rick Hertzberg has a very smart, compact comment on the subject.

Kate Brumback of the AP: "A study by the nonpartisan Migration Policiy Institute "examined a program that allows participating local agencies to enforce federal immigration law>," and found that the law was being enforced unevenly. "Several agencies in the Southeast were turning over every illegal immigrant taken into custody ... while others are focused on deporting more violent criminals."

Mark Lacey of the New York Times: "... New York City sent undercover investigators to an Arizona gun show and found instances in which private sellers sold semiautomatic pistols even after buyers said they probably could not pass background checks, city officials said.... Private, unlicensed sellers are not required to run federal background checks, but it is a violation of federal law to sell guns to people if sellers suspect they are felons or mentally ill or are otherwise prohibited from buying.... In two instances, the New York undercover officers specifically said before buying a gun, 'I probably couldn’t pass a background check,' but were still sold guns, city officials said."

Does Connecticut Want to Replace One Preening, Sanctimonious Blowhard with Another? Sean Miller of The Hill: "Liberals want Keith Olbermann to run for retiring Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman's (I-Conn.) seat." CW: just say no, Keith.

CW: I normally pay absolutely no attention to Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post, but since he writes this time on the major flaws of the potential Republican candidates for president, let's have at it. ...

... Jim Fallows says Chinese Amb. Jon Huntsman, a Republican, can't stay on the job if he's contemplating a run against President Obama in 2012, as reports suggest. ...

... CW: I think Ben Smith gets it right: "... if you assume that the primary will be defined by and against Mitt Romney, Huntsman will be to Romney what Obama was to Clinton: A purer, more credible version." ...

... Backstory. Politico: "The White House expects Jon Huntsman, the U.S. Ambassador to China, to resign his post this spring to explore a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, top Democrats said. GOP allies of Huntsman have already begun laying plans for a quick-start campaign should the former Utah governor decide to" run. New York Times Update: "Jon Huntsman, the United States ambassador to China, has informed the White House that he plans to step down in the next few months, further stoking speculation about his presidential ambitions." Washington Post story here.

Steve Kroft of CBS News interviews Julian Assange for "60 Minutes":

     ... You can watch the rest of the interview & link to related content on the "60 Minutes" page here.

News Items

New York Times: "Egyptian opposition groups gathered on Monday for a seventh day in the central Liberation Square, seeking to maintain the momentum of their uprising against President Hosni Mubarak as the army struggled to control a capital seized variously by fears of chaos and euphoria that change may be imminent." ...

... Washington Post: "Egyptian police reappeared on the streets of this embattled capital Monday, after virtually disappearing over the weekend and leaving the military to maintain order in the face of anti-government demonstrations." ...

... Haaretz, Reuters: "Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has instructed his government to begin talks with the opposition parties.... Mubarak told his new prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, to start talking to the opposition and find out their specific demands.... Egyptian military officers and soldiers promised Monday that they will not hurt any of the protesters in Tuesday's 'million man march'." ...

... Globe and Mail: "Cairo's international airport was a scene of chaos and confusion Monday as thousands of foreigners sought to flee the unrest in Egypt and countries around the world scrambled to send in planes to fly their citizens out." ...

... AP: "Israeli officials say they have agreed to allow Egypt to move several hundred troops into the Sinai Peninsula for the first time since [1979].... Under the 1979 peace treaty, Israel returned the captured Sinai to Egypt. In return, Egypt agreed to leave the area demilitarized. With street protests threatening the Egyptian regime, the unnamed officials say that Israel agreed to allow the Egyptian army to move two battalions, about 800 soldiers, into Sinai." ...

... CNN: "While discontent, resentment and nationalism continue to fuel demonstrations, one vital staple is in short supply: food. Many families in Egypt are fast running out of staples such as bread, beans and rice and are often unable or unwilling to shop for groceries." ...

... New York Times: "While Egypt’s banks and stock market closed Monday because of the chaos there, the uncertainty weighed on markets elsewhere. Most Asian markets fell, although trading was already low ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday this week, analysts said. Shares opened lower across Europe as well, but Standard & Poor’s 500 index futures were flat, suggesting stocks would be little changed at the opening on Wall Street." ...

... AP: "Egypt needs a peaceful transition to democracy, EU foreign ministers urged Monday, warning the country's citizens to be on guard against a takeover by religious militants." ...

... AFP: "Former US president Jimmy Carter, who brokered the existing peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, predicted Sunday that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will have to resign because 'the people have decided....'" ...

... AP: "International Mideast envoy Tony Blair said Monday that a change in Egypt's leadership is inevitable after the week of anti-government protests that have gripped the country."

AP: "Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is convening an unprecedented mass meeting of U.S. ambassadors. The top envoys from nearly all of America's 260 embassies, consulates and other posts in more than 180 countries will be gathering at the State Department beginning on Monday. Officials say it's the first such global conference."

New York Times: "Fraud and mismanagement at Afghanistan’s largest bank have resulted in potential losses of as much as $900 million — three times previous estimates — heightening concerns that the bank could collapse and trigger a broad financial panic in Afghanistan, according to American, European and Afghan officials." ...

... Washington Post: "The acting chief financial officer and other Pakistani employees of Kabul Bank have fled Afghanistan amid an investigation into the scope of the bank's reckless lending and allegations that its shareholders paid large bribes to many senior Afghan officials, according to Afghan officials and others familiar with the issue."

The Commentariat -- January 30

Art by Barry Blitt for the New York Times.Frank Rich: "The Republicans, who sold themselves as the uncompromising champions of Tea Party-fueled fiscal austerity, have discovered that most Americans prefer compromise to confrontation." ...

... Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "The outlines of the domestic side of the 2012 election debate came into sharper focus this past week. President Obama called on America to win the future and made government a principal instrument of that effort. Republicans countered by pointing at Washington and its appetite for spending as the single biggest threat to a secure future." ...

... Peter Wallsten of the Washington Post: "Less than three months since his party's major election losses, President Obama has presided over a West Wing makeover designed to help him keep a sharp focus on economic issues heading into his 2012 reelection campaign, while drawing clear lines of distinction with newly empowered Republicans." ...

... Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times: President Obama pivots into the Cheerleader-in-Chief just as he is gearing up his re-election campaign. David Axelrod claims the upbeat State of the Union address was not so much a pivot as "a straight rhetorical line ... from earlier speeches like the heavily biographical 2004 keynote to the Democratic National Convention, in which Mr. Obama spoke of America as 'a magical place.' The State of the Union address, Mr. Axelrod said, was ... a 'matter of returning to first principles' for a president who had to temper his rhetoric when his administration was 'functioning as a triage unit arriving in the middle of an economic calamity.'"

... Maureen Dowd: David Axelrod departs the White House. "Asked about the cascade of 'exclusive' exit interviews he was giving, he warned drolly: 'Don’t turn on the Shopping Network!'” AND here's another "exclusive" exit interview, this one with Jack Tapper of ABC News:

Fareed Zakaria on Egypt:

Zakaria interviews Mohamed ElBaradei:

Massimo Calabresi of Time: "... Secretary of State [Hillary Clinton] took the U.S. position on the situation in Egypt a tonal step further, calling for an 'orderly transition', suggesting that the administration is beginning to view embattled President Hosni Mubarak's days as numbered.... The U.S. will have a better chance of influencing a slow handover of power over the next six to nine months than trying to drive fast changing events on the ground. Clinton's statements suggest that's the developing American strategy." CW: see today's Ledes. ...

... David Sanger & Helene Cooper of the New York Times: "President Obama’s decision to stop short, at least for now, of calling for Hosni Mubarak’s resignation was driven by the administration’s concern that it could lose all leverage over the Egyptian president, and because it feared creating a power vacuum inside the country, according to administration officials involved in the debate. In recounting Saturday’s deliberations, they said Mr. Obama was acutely conscious of avoiding any perception that the United States was once again quietly engineering the ouster of a major Middle East leader." ...

Justin Elliott of Salon talks with Stanford historian Joel Beinin about the history of the U.S.'s alliance with Egyptian leadership -- a very useful shortcourse. ...

... Here's Juan Cole's take on Egyptian class conflict. ...

Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman. European Pressphoto Agency photo.... Michael Slackman of the New York Times profiles Omar Suleiman, whom Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak named vice president yesterday. ...

... AND Jane Mayer of the New Yorker: Suleiman "was the C.I.A.’s point man in Egypt for renditions — the covert program in which the C.I.A. snatched terror suspects from around the world and returned them to Egypt and elsewhere for interrogation, often under brutal circumstances." ...

... Scott Shane of the New York Times on the role of Web tools in revolutionary uprisings. ...

... Christopher Beam of Slate surmises how Egypt shut down the Internet. ...

... AND the Huffington Post has a page with suggestions for how Egyptians can get back online. Of course, if they're not online, I don't know how they'll read it. Oh, and it's all in English. ...

.. Tweets from Egyptian journalist Waal Abbas here. Most are in Arabic; a few in English. Related Los Angeles Times story here.

... Howard Schneider & Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post: "Egypt's military, built with tens of billions of dollars in American technology and training, is facing its biggest test in decades.... The arrival of tanks and troops in Cairo's streets seemed to calm a tense situation, suggesting that the Egyptian military will play a key role as the country navigates its way out of the current crisis. On Saturday, soldiers seemed largely to sympathize with the throngs of protesters. The massive amounts of defense aid -- which have made Egypt's military one of the more effective forces in the region and yielded a relatively stable and wealthy officer class -- will probably give the United States some critical leverage, Middle East analysts said."

WTF. Who -- besides the Newt -- knew that Gingrich wrote a book published in 2005 titled Winning the Future? Kasie Hunt of Politico writes that Newt's little polemic has shot up in sales since President Obama used the phrase "win" or "winning the future" nine times in his SOTU & Gov. Classy S. Palin thought she should call attention to the acronym. Naturally, Newt has been tweeting about it.

John Curran of the AP: "Bolstered by billions in federal stimulus money, an effort to expand broadband Internet access to rural areas is under way, an ambitious 21st-century infrastructure project with parallels to the New Deal electrification of the nation's hinterlands in the 1930s and 1940s. President Barack Obama emphasized the importance of Internet access in his State of the Union address last week."

John Donnelly of CQ: "For the second year in a row, the U.S. military has lost more troops to suicide than it has to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Palin Retreats. Andy Barr of Politico: in a speech before a gun club in Reno, Sarah Palin retooled "Don't retreat, reload," to "Don't retreat, stand tall."

Body Size Matters. (Just Thought This Was Interesting.) Amelia Reyno of the Washington Post: "... thin women are paid significantly more than their average-size counterparts, while heavier women make less. Skinnier-than-average men, on the other hand, cash smaller paychecks than their average-weight peers. Experts say it's just another sign that as a society, we've internalized the unrealistic, media-driven physical ideals that show up in the workplace -- and therefore the pocketbook."

News Items

Firedoglake: "Twenty-five protesters were arrested in Rancho Mirage, California today, at a protest in front of the Rancho Las Palmas resort, site of the 'Billionaire’s Caucus,' an annual meeting put on by the Koch Brothers and other corporate entities and conservative movement operators. Riverside Sheriff’s deputy Melissa Nieburger ... estimated between 800 and 1,000 activists at the 'Uncloak the Kochs' event." New York Times story here.

AP: "Southern Sudan's referendum commission said Sunday that more than 99 percent of voters in the south opted to secede from the country's north in a vote held earlier this month.... If the process stays on track, Southern Sudan will become the world's newest country in July. Border demarcation, oil rights and the status of the contested region of Abyei still have to be negotiated."

Fox "News": "The United States wants to see steps taken to transition Egypt to a democracy, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday in remarks that avoided stating a U.S. preference about Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's fate but offered several positive marks for Egypt's army." Updates: New York Times story here; Politico story here. ...

... New York Times: "As President Hosni Mubarak struggled to maintain a tenuous hold on power and the Egyptian military reinforced strategic points in the capital with tanks and armored vehicles, the United States said on Sunday it was offering evacuation flights for American citizens, including diplomatic dependents and non-essential staff." Story had been updated. The lede now reads, "The Egyptian uprising, which emerged as a disparate and spontaneous grass-roots movement, began to coalesce Sunday, as the largest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, threw its support behind a leading secular opposition figure, Mohamed ElBaradei, to negotiate on behalf of the forces seeking the fall of President Hosni Mubarak." See Fareed Zakaria's interview of ElBaradei in the left column. ...

... New York Times: thousands of tourists are trapped in Egypt. Also, "about 90,000 Americans live and work in Egypt. There have been no reports so far of plans to evacuate them, though some American companies were ordering workers’ families to leave."