The Commentariat -- April 4

President Obama launches his "endorse the status-quo" re-election campaign with this video:

... Mike Murphy, a Republican consultant who is not a loon, assesses the ad.

... Here's the full text of the e-mail from President Obama -- I mean Barack -- minus the bit that links to the video above:

Today, we are filing papers to launch our 2012 campaign.

We're doing this now because the politics we believe in does not start with expensive TV ads or extravaganzas, but with you -- with people organizing block-by-block, talking to neighbors, co-workers, and friends. And that kind of campaign takes time to build.

So even though I'm focused on the job you elected me to do, and the race may not reach full speed for a year or more, the work of laying the foundation for our campaign must start today.

We've always known that lasting change wouldn't come quickly or easily. It never does. But as my administration and folks across the country fight to protect the progress we've made -- and make more -- we also need to begin mobilizing for 2012, long before the time comes for me to begin campaigning in earnest.

In the coming days, supporters like you will begin forging a new organization that we'll build together in cities and towns across the country. And I'll need you to help shape our plan as we create a campaign that's farther reaching, more focused, and more innovative than anything we've built before.

We'll start by doing something unprecedented: coordinating millions of one-on-one conversations between supporters across every single state, reconnecting old friends, inspiring new ones to join the cause, and readying ourselves for next year's fight.

This will be my final campaign, at least as a candidate. But the cause of making a lasting difference for our families, our communities, and our country has never been about one person. And it will succeed only if we work together.

There will be much more to come as the race unfolds. Today, simply let us know you're in to help us begin, and then spread the word: http://my.barackobama.com/2012:

 Thank you,
Barack ...

... Karen Garcia provides talking points for Obama campaign workers. ...

... AND conservative Ross Douthat of the New York Times laments that Obama's really good Republican opponents have chosen not to run. CW: I'm really linking Douthat's column for the comments. Gemli's (#6) is a classic; here's part of it, but read the whole comment:

If your list of Republican candidates represents the best and the brightest of the Party of Lincoln, then the End Times are truly upon us. This litany of racially intolerant retrograde homophobic anti-scientific fundamentalist luminaries may be just smart enough to realize that the 'ideas' they have about crushing the middle class under the wheel of false austerity, reaching into women's wombs, vilifying gays, and giving more breaks to corporations may not fly just now with the voters.

Quote of the Day. I would like to publicly applaud the Florida legislature for having the cajones once again to defy an RNC-endorsed/coerced national primary electoral 'system' that gives wildly disproportionate influence in the selection of our nominee (and potentially our next president) to a collection of syrup farmers and ethanol freaks in New Hampshire and Iowa. -- Lew Oliver, Chair of the Orange County, Florida, Republican party

E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post: Will President Obama stand up to Rep. Paul Ryan, who is proposing to dismantle key parts of the government while cutting taxes for the rich. ...

... Ezra Klein links to this January 2011 policy analysis by Andrew Fieldhouse of the Economic Policy Institute titled, "Paul Ryan's Plan for Millionaires' Gain & Middle-Class Pain. The 'Ryan Roadmap' leads to an entitlement raid and middle-class tax hikes in order to enrich the wealthy." (pdf) Klein dregs up the Ryan Roadmap because "Paul Ryan ... is such a big spender that each and every Senate Republican voted to declare his Roadmap unconstitutional?" See Bartlett's & Klein's posts below.

Bruce Bartlett of Capital Gains & Games: Last Thursday "all 47 Senate Republicans introduced a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget.... This is quite possibly the stupidest constitutional amendment I think I have ever seen. It looks like it was drafted by a couple of interns on the back of a napkin. Every senator cosponsoring this POS should be ashamed of themselves." ...

     ... Ezra Klein: "Every single Senate Republican has endorsed a constitutional amendment that would’ve made Ronald Reagan’s fiscal policy unconstitutional. That’s how far to the right the modern GOP has swung."

So What's a Teabagger to Do? Russell Berman of The Hill: Funding runs out for the federal government this Friday. "The [House] freshman class, vaunted for its unprecedented size and its Tea-Party ties, has been caught between party leadership nudging it toward compromise on one end and anti-spending activists clamoring for a clash on the other."

NEW. Jeffrey Toobin in the New Yorker: "... the vulgar truth about Citizens United, the doomed Arizona law [Arizona Free Enterprise v. Bennett], and related future cases remains: the five Justices appointed by Republicans are thrashing the four appointed by Democrats — to the enormous advantage of the G.O.P. Coincidence? You be the judge."

David Callahan in a New York Times op-ed: the Koch brothers & other corporations can not only keep secret their contributions to political advocacy organizations, they can write them off as "charity." But you can't -- private individuals have to pay taxes on donations to such groups. CW: notice how the Supreme Court has decided a corporation is "a person" when it comes to free speech, but the IRS code says a corporation is not subject to the taxes "a person" must pay on political donations. Callahan writes that the IRS "should create a new category for nonprofits engaged in policy advocacy."

Anthony Grafton of the New Yorker: "Around the country, public universities are under attack. Governors and legislators deny that research and higher education are public goods that deserve support from public monies." Grafton notes that the University of Wisconsin-Madison did the right thing by "meticulously balancing the public right to information against countervailing rights to privacy" in regard to the GOP's open-records request for e-mails from Prof. Bill Cronon.

Paul Krugman: Republicans held a committee hearing on climate change last week that "was a farce: a supposedly crucial hearing stacked with people who had no business being there and instant ostracism for a climate skeptic who was actually willing to change his mind in the face of evidence." Comments are here.

New York Times Editors: politicians at the federal and state levels have recklessly endangered the chances for a robust economic recovery.

Nina Totenburg of NPR: Harry Connick, Sr., the New Orleans D.A., who has admitted in court to dropping the ball in his office's prosecution of an apparently innocent man, John Thompson, who sat on death row for 18 years, feels "vindicated" by the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in his (Connick's) favor. CW: Connick shouldn't feel vindicated; he should feel ashamed. With audio, which is well-worth hearing.

Christopher Hitchens in Slate: Afghan President Hamid Karzai makes Quran-burning frenzy worse. Why are we still supporting this guy?

Right Wing World

Steve Benen explains Mitt Romney's latest explanation for Massachusetts' Romneycare. In a nutshell:

That radical, communistic health care policy you hate so intensely? Don't worry, I only did that at the state level.

     ... Trouble is, Romney is on the record saying Romneycare would make a good model for a federal health plan -- you know, one just like the Affordable Health Act. Don't worry, Mitt; Right Wing World is a fact-free zone. You can say anything you want.

In Right Wing World anti-union ads produced for Wisconsin & Florida, only a fake teacher will do.

Local News

How to Get a Well-Paid State Job in Wisconsin. Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has the lead story in the online version of the paper: "Just in his mid-20s, Brian Deschane has no college degree, very little management experience and two drunken-driving convictions. Yet he has landed an $81,500-per-year job in Gov. Scott Walker's administration overseeing environmental and regulatory matters and dozens of employees at the Department of Commerce. Even though Walker says the state is broke and public employees are overpaid, Deschane already has earned a promotion and a 26% pay raise in just two months with the state. How did Deschane score his plum assignment with the Walker team? ... His father is Jerry Deschane, executive vice president and longtime lobbyist for the Madison-based Wisconsin Builders Association, which bet big on Walker during last year's governor's race. The group's political action committee gave $29,000 to Walker and his running mate...." ...

... Ken Vogel of Politico: "A conservative judge’s campaign for re-election to the Wisconsin Supreme Court has become the next front in a growing multi-state Republican effort to limit the power of organized labor. The once-obscure judicial race, which will be decided in a Tuesday [tomorrow] election, has taken on national implications both because Gov. Scott Walker’s signature legislation stripping public union bargaining powers could be decided by the court and because it’s the first time voters have gone to the polls since Walker signed the bill that sparked the national push. The contest between incumbent David Prosser and liberal challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg has attracted an infusion of outside spending that could total as much as $5 million...."

Karen Garcia on the New York State budget, passed behind closed doors, which cuts spending for New York City, public schools & many social services, while lowering taxes on the rich who now will be taxed at a lower rate than the middle class. CW: New York has a Democratic governor -- Andrew Cuomo -- and a Democcratic assembly. Republicans hold the majority in the senate, but it really doesn't matter, does it? Democrat or Republican, most of them work in service of their rich benefactors and against the interests of the general public.

Jessica Yellin of CNN: "Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine is planning to announce he will run in 2012 for the Virginia U.S. Senate seat currently held by fellow Democrat Jim Webb, who is retiring, two senior Democratic sources told CNN on Sunday."

Christine Stapleton & Kimberly Miller of the Palm Beach (Florida) Post: "Angry and exasperated by faulty foreclosure documents, judges throughout Florida are hitting back by increasingly dismissing cases and boldly accusing lawyers of 'fraud upon the court.' A Palm Beach Post review of cases in state and appellate courts found judges are routinely dismissing cases for questionable paperwork. Although in most cases the bank is allowed to refile the case with the appropriate documents, in a growing number of cases judges are awarding homeowners their homes free and clear after finding fraud upon the court. Still, critics say judges are not doing enough."

News Ledes

The court’s opinion offers a road map — more truly, a one-step instruction — to any government that wishes to insulate its financing of religious activity from legal challenge. -- Justice Elena Kagan, in her first dissent

New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Monday effectively upheld an Arizona program that aids religious schools, saying in a 5-to-4 decision that the plaintiffs had no standing to challenge it. The program itself is novel and complicated, and allowing it to go forward may be of no particular moment. But by closing the courthouse door to some kinds of suits that claim violations of the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion, the court’s ruling in the case may be quite consequential." Read the opinion, concurring opinion by Justice Scalia & dissent here (pdf).

New York Times: "Southwest Airlines said on Monday that it had detected subsurface cracks in a third aircraft during inspections and that it had canceled more flights after a five-foot hole ripped through the roof of a jetliner on Friday.... The airline also said in the statement that it had canceled 70 flights from its schedule of 3,400 departures on Monday. That came after Southwest canceled about 300 flights each on Saturday and Sunday."

New York Times: "Major banks, retailers and other businesses warned their customers on Monday to be on the lookout for possible e-mail schemes after a security breach at an online marketing firm exposed the e-mail addresses and names of millions of customers. The marketing firm, Epsilon, which handles e-mail marketing lists for prominent companies like JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Kroger, Walgreens and Disney issued a brief statement on Friday saying that hackers had stolen names and e-mail addresses of customers." CW: I got a notice from BestBuy about it, which said only my name & e-mail address had been compromised.

CBS News: "Attorney General Eric Holder today will announce that self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad will be tried in a military commission, the CBS News Investigative Unit has learned. A source says the commission will be held at the Guantanamo Bay prison." New York Times story here.

Here's the Wall Street Journal story on House Republicans' proposed 2012 budget, prepared by Rep. Paul Ryan: The plan "would cut more than $4 trillion from federal spending projected over the next decade and ... would essentially end Medicare.... Mr. Ryan’s proposal would apply to those currently under the age of 55, and for those Americans would convert Medicare into a ‘premium support’ system.... The proposal would also convert Medicaid, the health program for the poor, into a series of block grants to give states more flexibility." CW: the New York Times story on this proposal is linked in yesterday's ledes.

Washington Post: "With the prospect of a government shutdown looming Friday, leaders of both parties publicly staked out seemingly inflexible positions while staff members worked in private on a possible compromise to finally pass the 2011 budget."

AP: "Libyan rebels pushed into the strategic oil town of Brega on Monday but came under fire from Moammar Gadhafi's forces, as a government envoy began a diplomatic push in Europe to discuss an end to the fighting."

New York Times: "Tokyo Electric Power Company will release almost 11,500 tons of water contaminated with low levels of radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean, as workers struggle to contain the increasing amounts of dangerous runoff resulting from efforts to cool the plant’s damaged reactors."

The Commentariat -- April 3

** The Super-Rich Just Don't Get It -- and They Won't till It's Too Late. Joseph Stiglitz in Vanity Fair: "The Supreme Court, in its recent Citizens United case, has enshrined the right of corporations to buy government.... The personal and the political are today in perfect alignment. Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent.... America’s inequality distorts our society in every conceivable way.... Of all the costs imposed on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the erosion of our sense of identity, in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community...." CW: read all of Stiglitz' essay; the few bits I've copied here don't give the whole picture.

** Ethan Bronner of the New York Times: "With revolutionary fervor sweeping the Middle East, Israel is under mounting pressure to make a far-reaching offer to the Palestinians or face a United Nations vote welcoming the State of Palestine as a member whose territory includes all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority has been steadily building support for such a resolution in September, a move that could place Israel into a diplomatic vise. Israel would be occupying land belonging to a fellow United Nations member, land it has controlled and settled for more than four decades and some of which it expects to keep in any two-state solution."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) Press Release: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today questioned why the Federal Reserve provided more than $26 billion in credit to an Arab intermediary for the Central Bank of Libya. The total includes at least $3.2 billion in loans that the Fed was forced to make public today in addition to earlier revelations under a Sanders provision in the Wall Street reform law. Sanders also asked why the Libyan-owned bank and two of its branches in New York, N.Y., were exempted from sanctions that the United States this month slapped on other Libyan businesses to pressure Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s government." ...

... John Nichols of The Nation: "... what’s the point of sanctions if they don’t crack down on the dictator’s bank? ... The senator is also asking Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner – a long-time Fed retainer -- to explain the Arab Banking Corp. was borrowing money at almost zero interest from one arm of the government, the Fed, at the same time the Treasury Department was borrowing money at a higher interest rate." And why aren't more Members of Congress asking these same questions?

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: can litigants get due process in huge class action suits? Some judges, and apparently at least one Supreme Court Justice, don't think so.

Nicholas Kristof: "Mr. Obama and other world leaders did something truly extraordinary, wonderful and rare: they ordered a humanitarian intervention that saved thousands of lives and that even Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s closest aides seem to think will lead to his ouster." The comments are here.

Bara Vaida of the Washington Post: "From Washington to California, the year-old health law, with its layers of complexity, is setting off a gold rush for high-priced lawyers and consultants. It’s 'a full employment act for health-care consultants,' said Ian Morrison, a founding partner of Strategic Health Perspectives in Menlo Park, Calif. Much of the activity — and the prospect of glitteringly high fees — is swirling around a widely discussed provision that encourages doctors, hospitals and insurers to team up in treating patients."

Maureen Dowd: "Republicans hate social engineering, unless they're doing it." And they're doing it. CW: The comments are here.

Dan Eggen & Perry Bacon of the Washington Post: "Facing an energized Republican Party and deep-pocketed conservative groups, President Obama is kicking off his 2012 reelection campaign with a concerted push for help from wealthy donors and liberal groups unbound by spending limits. The strategy — which could begin in earnest as early as Monday with the formation of an official presidential committee — suggests a notable shift in emphasis for a president who has long decried the outsize role of money in politics." ...

Jeff Zeleny's New York Times profile/puff piece on Jim Messina, who will head up President Obama's re-election campaign, strikes me as a bore, but it is receiving a lot of attention. Ben Smith explains why in a post titled "The Messina Wars." ...

... AND Seth Meyers checks out the field of Republican candidates:

Erik Eckholm of the New York Times examines Mike Huckabee's efforts to re-energize the Christian right -- last week at a political non-partisan forum for Iowa evangelical ministers & their wives.

Right Wing World *

Tim Pawlenty Is a Liar Now & Was a Terrible Governor Then. Tom Hamburger & Melanie Mason of the Los Angeles Times: "A close look at [probable Republican presidential candidate Tim] Pawlenty's record [as governor] in Minnesota, and conversations with former Republican allies in the state, suggest that the former governor's tough rhetoric does not match Minnesota's reality.... To [try to balance the budget], he relied on money from the federal stimulus — a program he has decried as wasteful — and other one-time fixes. He postponed school and other obligations, leading to hikes in local property taxes and strains on school districts as burdens shifted downward. Most strikingly, he left the state with a $5-billion projected deficit, one of the highest in the nation as a percentage of the state's general fund." It gets worse. As you read, bear in mind this is a straight news story, not an opinion piece.

What's a Liar to Do? Dan Balz of the Washington Post writes a column -- not a news story -- that begins, "This is not an easy time for Republicans who are thinking of running for president in 2012. Whatever assumptions about the road ahead that may have existed a few months ago suddenly look more complicated, because of unfolding events here and abroad." Balz outlines the changing circumstances, and the changing public reactions to those circumstances, that make it hard for a Republican presidential candidate to know what to do. CW: but, without Balz's saying it or meaning it, what comes across to me is the underlying assumption that Republican candidates don't know what storylines they should invent. A candidate with principles wouldn't have any trouble.

CC of Daily Kos: Sen. Rand Paul has conveniently "forgotten" he voted in favor of a resolution urging the U.N. to impose a no-fly zone over Libya. He has apparently instructed his staff to say he didn't vote for it the resolution, or the Democrats who wrote it were "sneaky." Or whatever. Lawrence O'Donnell has a recording of another young Paul staffer being coached by a senior staffer who tells an NBC producer another convoluted version of why Paul's vote wasn't a vote. O'Donnell is pretty longwinded, but the tape is interesting. Here's Paul on the Senate floor proposing a 180-degree counter-resolution, saying, "There has been no Constitutional authority given to the President to be committing troops to this war":

... AND here, having executed his own flipflop, Sen. Paul bashes Newt Gingrich for his multiple positions on the Libyan intervention:

... It must be fun to be a Republican, because you can say whatever you want. Why, you can even criticize your potential presidential opponents for doing exactly what you just got through doing!

* Where facts never intrude.

Local News

Mary Ellen Klas of the Miami Herald/St. Pete Times: "In the next 30 days, Florida lawmakers are poised to make it easier for insurance companies to raise rates, make it more difficult for women to receive an abortion and hand over control of prisons to private companies. These are just a few of the proposals the Republican-led Legislature is pushing in the final weeks of their 60-day session. Others include dramatically changing the way the state handles Medicaid, state pensions, courts, growth and the environment."

News Ledes

New York Times: "House Republicans plan this week to propose more than $4 trillion in federal spending reductions over the next decade by reshaping popular programs like Medicare, the Budget Committee chairman said Sunday in opening a new front in the intensifying budget wars."

New York Times: "BP has asked United States regulators for permission to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, two company officials said on Sunday, creating a delicate situation for the Obama administration as it seeks to balance safety concerns with a desire to increase domestic oil production."

New York Times: "The United States, which long supported Yemen’s president, even in the face of recent widespread protests, has now quietly shifted positions and has concluded that he is unlikely to bring about the required reforms and must be eased out of office, according to American and Yemeni officials."

... ABC News: "In his first interview since leaving the White House last fall, former Obama National Security Advisor Jim Jones warned that the way events were unfolding in Yemen were 'not good.' Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been an ally of the United States in the fight against terrorism, is facing increasing pressure to step down; Jones echoed language coming from the White House...."

Al Jazeera: "Abdel Ati al-Obeidi, Libya's acting foreign minister, told the Greek prime minister in Athens that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi wants the fighting to end. 'It seems that the Libyan authorities are seeking a solution,' Dimitris Droutsas, the Greek foreign minister, said." ...

... Washington Post: "Libya’s rebel military struggled Saturday to explain an apparent rift within its highest ranks while acknowledging its soldiers’ role in a mistaken NATO bombing of rebel columns the night before. The strike, which killed 13 rebels and injured seven, illustrated the hazards of conducting an aerial bombing campaign against a fluid and fast moving front line. Several cars and an ambulance were also incinerated, and opposition leaders said rebels may have been responsible for the bombing because they had fired their guns into the air in celebration." ...

... AP: "Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga, the vice chairman of the [Libyan rebel] National Provisional Council..., says the opposition to longtime leader Moammar Gadahfi seeks to install a parliamentary democracy in the country."

AP: "Afghan protests against the burning of a Quran in Florida entered a third day with a demonstrations in the south and east Sunday, while the Taliban called on people to rise up, blaming government forces for any violence." ...

     ... Politico Update: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told CBS's Bob Schieffer on Sunday that some members of Congress were considering some kind of action in response to the Florida Quran burning that sparked a murderous riot at a United Nations complex in Afghanistan and other mayhem." ...

     ... CNN Update: "Top U.S. officials in Afghanistan on Sunday condemned the burning of a Quran in the United States that sparked three days of protests in which more than 20 people died. Burning the Muslim holy book 'was hateful, it was intolerant and it was extremely disrespectful and again, we condemn it in the strongest manner possible,' said Gen. David Petraeus, who heads the U.S.-led international forces in Afghanistan."

AP: "The United Nations and the government it supports in embattled Ivory Coast are trading accusations over the killings of hundreds of civilians in a western town. The U.N. accused hunters fighting in a force to install democratically elected President Alassane Ouattara of 'extra-judicial executions' of more than 330 people in Duekoue. Ouattara's government Saturday night accused U.N. peacekeepers of abandoning civilians there to vengeful militiamen fighting for incumbent Laurent Gbagbo, who refuses to accept his election defeat."

AP: "It could take several more months to bring Japan's tsunami-ravaged nuclear plant under control, a safety agency spokesman said Sunday as engineers tried to find a way to stop highly radioactive water from pouring into the Pacific." A second attempt to seal a leak of radioactive contaminants is not working yet, and new problems arise daily.

AP: "A week ago, Wisconsin Republicans thought they'd won the fight over the state's polarizing union rights bill. They'd weathered massive protests, outfoxed Senate Democrats who fled the state and gotten around a restraining order blocking the law by having an obscure state agency publish it. They even started preparations to pull money from public workers' paychecks. But the victory was short-lived. A judge ruled Friday that the restraining order will stay in place for at least two months she while considers whether Republicans passed the law illegally."

AP: "Federal records show cracks were found and repaired a year ago in the frame of the Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-300 that made an emergency landing at an Arizona military base after a hole was torn from the passenger cabin.... Southwest grounded 80 similar planes to carry out inspections."

Reuters: "Al Qaeda operatives are in Brazil planning attacks, raising money and recruiting followers, a leading news magazine reported Saturday, renewing concerns about the nation serving as a hide-out for Islamic militants. Veja magazine, in its online edition, reported that at least 20 people affiliated with al Qaeda as well as the Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim group Hezbollah, the Palestinian group Hamas and two other organizations have been hiding out in the South American country."

The Commentariat -- April 2

President Obama's Weekly Address:

Today's Weader Award for Irony Goes to ...

... The SEC. David Hilzenrath of the Washington Post: "The Securities and Exchange Commission, which demands good accounting in the corporate world, has considerable trouble keeping its own books, according to a report this week by federal auditors.... The problems are not new: Auditors have been issuing warnings about the SEC’s internal accounting for years, and the SEC has acknowledged weaknesses. But the situation worsened in 2010 as temporary patches failed, according to GAO officials."

Robert Pear of the New York Times: especially since states have made massive budget cutbacks, Medicaid now "pays doctors so little that many refuse to take its patients."

"Cruel but Not Unusual. Clarence Thomas Writes One of the Meanest Supreme Court Decisions Ever." Dahlia Lithwick of Slate shows that Justice Scalia's concurring opinion in the case of Thompson v. Connick is just as bad. In the course of this article involving the case of multiple ADAs suppressing multiple exculpatory documents that would have exonerated or helped to exonerate an innocent man who was on death row for 18 years & many times faced a scheduled execution, Lithwick calls the Justices "apathetic," demonstrating "a moral flat line," "hyper-technical," "deliberaely callous," "pitiless" and "scornful." When you read the particulars, you'll think Lithwick is being overly polite. These are two evil "Justices" who don't give a flying fuck about justice. That goes for Kennedy, Roberts & Alito, too.

New York Times Editors: "... continuing hate crimes [against Muslims] were laid bare at a valuable but barely noticed Senate hearing last week that provided welcome contrast to Representative Peter King’s airing of his xenophobic allegation that the Muslim-American community has been radicalized. In running the hearing, Senator Richard Durbin tried to set the record straight about the patriotism of a vast majority of American-Muslim citizens and the continuing assaults on their civil rights. He warned against the 'guilt by association' whipped up by Mr. King’s broadsides...." C-SPAN has video of the hearings.

Joe Nocera has his first op-ed column in today's Times, which he devotes to Warren Buffett's completely unconvincing gloss of "what looks like insider trading" by Buffett's No. 2 man, David Sokol. CW: Martha Stewart went to jail for doing a lot less than Sokol did. According to Nocera, Sokol negotiated a takeover of a company called Lubrizol & actively encouraged Buffett to go for it at the same time Sokol was trading in Lubrizol stocks. Sokol made about $3 million on the stocks when Buffett acquired Lubrizol, at Sokol's urging. Does anybody think the SEC will go after the deputy of President Obama's friend Warren Buffett the way they went after Stewart? Time will tell. Comments are here. ...

... Nocera's account is consistent with this one by Serene Ng & Eric Holm of the Wall Street Journal. ...

... Buffett's support for Sokol is all the more perplexing when you figure he must have known of Sokol's past. Peter Cohan of AOL details some of Sokol's earlier misdeeds, which include (1) a huge stockholder ripoff effected by cooking the books (a Nebraska court ordered Sokol to pay $32 milllion to the plaintiffs for that stunt), (2) tricking the directors of his own company into selling it to Buffett (Sokol settled with shareholders out of court for $7.5 million).

Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times: Islamic radicals "are now leaping aboard the democracy bandwagon, alarming those who believe that religious radicals are seeking to put in place strict Islamic law through ballots."

Right Wing World

Gail Collins: "In a potential Republican field that includes Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, it’s hard to come up with a line of attack loopy enough to stand out from the pack. But darned if [Donald] Trump didn’t manage to find one." Comments are here.

Local News

Wisconsin ...

The video below is a "closing argument" against conservative State Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, who is up for re-election Tuesday. (The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel provides the backstory on the incident outlined in the video.) Before the Wisconsin union protests, Prosser was probably a shoo-in. Former Democratic Gov. Patrick Lucey, for instance, was Prosser's campaign co-chair. This past week, Lucey withdrew his support & endorsed Prosser's challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg, saying Prosser demonstrated "a disturbing distermper and lack of civility." Yeah, I guess:

     ... BUT, beware. That brilliant Constitutional scholar (the First Amendment guarantees that nobody can criticize me) and expert on Wisconsin jurisprudence Sarah Palin has endorsed Prosser, and outside interests backing Prosser have outspent those supporting Kloppenburg. ...

     ... AND a a group called Citizens for a Strong America is running a TV ad which claims, among other things, that "Kloppenburg is so extreme, she even put an 80-year-old farmer in jail for refusing to plant native vegetation on his farm." The ad earned a "Pants-on-Fire" rating from Wisconsin PolitiFact.

David Dayan of Firedoglake: "The chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin is confident that at least six of the eight recall elections of state Senators that the party is seeking will be successful, leading to an unprecedented set of recall elections in the summer or fall."

Maine ...

Some of the panels in the mural depicting the history of labor in Maine, by artist Judy Taylor of Tremont, Maine. FDR Labor Secretary Frances Perkins is represented (left) in the second panel pictured. Perkins, who is buried in Maine, was the first woman member of a U.S. presidential cabinet. Via the New York Times. Peter Catapano of the New York Times rounds up a few opinions by writers opposed to Maine Gov. Paul LePage's decision to remove a mural from the labor department that depicts, well, laborers. One of those opinionators is former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. In the meantime, as I pointed out in my comment on Catapano's post ...

Asked last week what he would do if protesters engaged in civil disobedience to protest removal of the mural, Gov. LePage said he would "laugh at the idiots." It turns out the "idiots" may get the last laugh.

... A lawsuit has been filed over removal of the mural, claiming that removal violates the First & Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The plaintiffs are a union leader, an OSHA employee, three artists & an attorney. ...

... Meanwhile, a Democratic member of the state legislature has introduced a bill providing for recall of the governor & other state officials. ...

... At the same time, some state senators from LePage's own party are blasting him in an op-ed to be published in some state newspapers on Monday.

Florida ...

More from America's Worst Governor Sociopath. Suzy Khimm of Mother Jones: "Continuing his assault on Florida's most vulnerable, Gov. Rick Scott issued an executive order on Thursday that immediately slashes money for the developmentally disabled. The cuts will reduce payments to group homes and social workers by 15 percent. Here's the Orlando Sentinel story; it will sicken you. ...

... The State Column: "According to the latest poll, Florida governor Rick Scott is the least popular governor in the nation. After just three months in office, Mr. Scott, a Republican, is facing a major backlash from voters. If he stood for re-election today, he would likely lose by a landslide, according to research released Wednesday by Public Policy Polling.

... He Said "Uterus!" Pierre Tristam in Common Dreams on "Florida legislators' creepy uterus obsession."

News Ledes

Al Jazeera: "US and Egyptian special forces have reportedly been offering covert armed training to rebel fighters in the battle for Libya, Al Jazeera has been told. An unnamed rebel source related how he had undergone training in military techniques at a 'secret facility' in eastern Libya."

New York Times: "A NATO airstrike near the battlefront in eastern Libya killed 13 rebel fighters outside the pivotal port city of Brega, a rebel spokesman and wounded fighters said Saturday."

New York Times: "As rebels swept across Ivory Coast in a rapid advance last week to oust the nation’s strongman, Laurent Gbagbo, hundreds of people were killed in a single town, the United Nations and aid groups said Saturday, in the worst episode of violence during the four-month political crisis that has plunged the country back into civil war."

New York Times: "The head of a United Nations panel that investigated Israel’s invasion of Gaza two years ago has retracted the central and most explosive assertion of the report — that Israel purposely killed Palestinian civilians there. Richard Goldstone, an esteemed South African jurist who led a panel of experts that spent months examining the Gaza war, wrote in an opinion article in The Washington Post, which was posted on its Web site on Friday night, that Israeli investigations into the conflict 'indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.'” Goldstone's Washington Post op-ed is here.

CNN: "Mike Huckabee won a 2012 presidential straw poll conducted in a key South Carolina county Saturday."

The Hill: "The House narrowly passed legislation on Friday that calls for a House-passed FY 2011 spending bill to become law should the Senate fail to approve a spending bill by April 6. It would also prevent members of Congress from being paid during a government shutdown. The bill, H.R. 1255, was approved over bitter Democratic opposition in a 221-202 vote in which no Democrats supported it, and 15 Republicans opposed it." CW: this is the bill that is clearly unconstitutional in that it declares a bill passed if the House says so; forget the Senate & the President. It's a joke your 5th-grade can probably explain.

The Hill: "President Obama pressed Senate and House leaders Saturday on crafting a spending deal, the White House said, making phone calls in which Obama said 'progress' was being made in the talks while still stating opposition to GOP policy riders. Obama’s used calls to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to emphasize his view that a shutdown would harm the economy...."

New York Times: "Violent protests over the burning of a Koran in Florida flared for a second straight day, with young men rampaging through the streets of this southern capital [of Kandahar], flying Taliban flags and wielding sticks. Nine people were killed and 81 injured in the disturbances, all from bullet wounds, according to Abdul Qayoum Pakhla, head of the provincial health department. One of the dead was a police officer.... The protests here came a day after a mob overran the headquarters of the United Nations in Mazar-i-Sharif Friday, killing 12 persons, seven of them international staff. The mob gathered after three mullahs at Friday Prayer urged action in response to the Koran burning by a pastor, Terry Jones, in Florida on March 20." ...

... Washington Post: "Taliban fighters attacked the gate of a large NATO military base on the outskirts of Kabul on Saturday morning but failed to do serious damage or breach the compound walls."

New York Times: "Highly radioactive water is leaking directly into the sea from a damaged pit near a crippled reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, safety officials said Saturday, the latest setback in the increasingly messy bid to regain control of the reactors." ...

     ... CNN Update: "A first attempt to plug a cracked concrete shaft that is leaking highly radioactive water into the ocean off Japan failed Saturday, so officials are now exploring alternatives, spokesmen for Tokyo Electric Power Co. said." With video.