The Commentariat -- April 28

The people who are threatening not to pass the debt ceiling are our version of al-Qaeda terrorists. Really. -- Paul O’Neill, U.S. Treasury Secretary under George W. Bush, via Time

"Good News!" Gail Collins "just [doesn't] see how things can get better than this when it comes to current affairs. Prince William is about to get married and President Obama has released his long-form birth certificate." CW: Reader comments are open for Collin's column and an Open Thread on Off Times Square. I've posted my comment on Collins' column. Update: so have Kate Madison & Karen Garcia. ...

     ... Update 2: there are a couple of excellent posts on today's Open Thread.

Joe Klein of Time: "So long as the conversation is about deficit-reduction, in the teeth of a recession, conservative extremists are playing offense and the President is, essentially, on the defensive.... To the extent that he continues playing this game, Obama is hurting himself in two ways: He continues to give the impression that he’s out of touch with the public’s real concerns–and he’s laying the groundwork for an economy that limps, sputters and perhaps stalls in 2012."

The President announces top personnel changes:

Glenn Greenwald: "... the CIA, under Obama, is more militarized than ever, as devoted to operationally fighting wars as anything else, including analyzing and gathering intelligence. This morning's Washington Post article on the Petraeus nomination -- headlined: "Petraeus would helm an increasingly militarized CIA" -- is unusual in presenting such a starkly forthright picture of how militarized the U.S. has become under the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner." ...

... Charles Hoskinson of Politico: "By choosing Leon Panetta as his next secretary of defense, President Barack Obama has signaled that he’s serious about cutting the Pentagon budget — even if that just happens to make life more difficult for the GOP. Obama’s plan to cut hundreds of billions of dollars worth of defense and security spending has exposed a growing chasm in the Republican Party — a split between security hawks who want to protect the Pentagon budget and deficit hawks who say that everyone has to share the pain."

What's wrong with the U.S.? These two headlines, juxtaposed on the front page of the Los Angeles Times online, give a clue, don't they?

     ... If  you want to read the stories, the hospital CEO story is here & the worker furlough story is here.

Jon Stewart interviews "the longest-serving Independent Senator in history" Bernie Sanders. In two parts, here and here.

Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times: "The announced reconciliation on Wednesday between Fatah and Hamas, the estranged Palestinian movements, puts the Obama administration in the uncomfortable position of having to reconsider its financial support for the Palestinian Authority, including millions of dollars the United States has spent to train and equip Palestinian security forces, officials and members of Congress said. The agreement, reached after secret talks brokered by Egypt, caught the Obama administration, like many others, by surprise."

Nicholas Kristof: China, "in the middle of its harshest crackdown on independent thought in two decades," has taken "a great leap backward."

Mike Huckabee sends out mixed signals & keeps everybody guessing. Will he or won't he run for president?

Jake Tapper of ABC News has a good post on the backstory behind President Obama's decision to seek a waiver from the State of Hawaii to obtain his long-form birth certificate. ...

... Media Birthers. Dave Weigel asks good questions: "In the seven years and four months of George W. Bush's presidency after 9/11, how many times did reporters ask "9/11 Truth" questions in White House briefings? How many times did they ask it of the president himself? I can't recall any times (although I welcome any corrections from readers.) But Obama has been asked multiple times about the birth certificate."

Evan McMorris-Santoro of TPM: "During a Las Vegas stump speech last night, [Donald] Trump fired off several hearty f-bombs to a group of adoring fans." With unedited video, which is definitely recorded on Shaky Cam.

Right Wing World, Birther Edition *

Remember way back when Republicans wanted a foreign-born President? On July 10, 2003, Orrin Hatch [R-Utah], chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, took action against what he calls 'an anachronism that is decidedly un-American.' He introduced a bill that would allow a person who has been a U.S. citizen for 20 years and a resident for 14 years to run for president. -- Weekly Standard

     ... Blast from the Past, via Justin Elliott of Salon. The purpose of the amendment, known colloqually as the "Arnold Amendment," was to allow Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for president.

Steve Kornacki of Salon: "More than half of Republicans still aren't buying Obama's story. 18 percent of them told Survey USA that they consider the long-form a forgery, and another 33 percent say they still have doubt. Moreover, nearly 60 percent of Republicans say that they either still consider Obama's birthplace to be open to debate or aren't sure, and 33 percent claim that the president was 'definitely' or 'probably' born elsewhere."

Alex Pareene of Salon produces "The Birther's Guide to Staying Relevant in a Post-'Long Form' World." Some of the new "avenues of investigation" birthers are already pursuing: "The certificate is a forgery..., his 'African' father disqualifies him..., soemthing about British citizenship & the Kenyan constitution..., he lost his citizienship..., still a secret Muslim..., how did he get into Columbia.... Birthism will survive. It will mutate and adapt."

Birther King. Susie Khimm of Mother Jones: self-described Birther King Andrew Martin tells Khimm, ""The pressure for his [Obama's] college records is going to become relentless." Martin also will demand Obama's admissions files & says he "has questions about Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour, whom fringe activists claim is a black Muslim nationalist who paid for Obama's law degree." Oh, and Martin is running for president! CW: I doubt he has any college records.

Birther Queen. Ryan Reilly of TPM: Hey, here's a surprise -- Orly Taitz, the Birther Queen suggests the long-form birth certificate the State of Hawaii produced is a fake because "In those years ... when they wrote race, they were writing 'Negro' not 'African'," Taitz says. "In those days nobody wrote African as a race, it just wasn't one of the options. It sounds like it would be written today, in the age of political correctness, and not in 1961 when they wrote white or Asian or 'Negro'." CW: and isn't the whole point of Taitz' campaign to make sure nobody forgets that the President is a NEE-gro?

People Voted for This Guy. Emily Ramshaw of the Texas Tribune: "State Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, has checked out the birth certificate President Barack Obama released [Wednesday] morning — and he's not satisfied. ...

Berman, who has filed a 'birther' bill this session that would force future presidential and vice presidential candidates to show their birth certificate in order to get on the Texas ballot, said he's got several key questions with Obama's birth certificate: Why did it take the president so long, amid a conservative firestorm, to release it? Why does it look 'brand new,' he said, when it's supposed to be five decades old? Why doesn't the hospital listed on the birth certificate have a 'plaque on the door' commemorating Obama's birth there? And has anyone checked with the delivery room doctor listed on the birth certificate (whose name Berman says is curiously difficult to make out)?

Media Matters analyzes Fox "News" coverage of birtherism. "A Media Matters review of Fox News' opinion programs found that in recent weeks, the network devoted nearly two hours and 20 minutes to the issue, and in the vast majority of the cases, the hosts either espoused birther conspiracies or did not challenge or correct false claims about Obama's birth that aired on their shows." With charts!

Jed Lewison in Daily Kos: according to some on the right -- like Jonah Goldberg -- the real conspiracy was perpetrated by Obama himself: he lured gullible wingers into being crazy birthers. Well, no, he didn't.

Donald Trump said he’d release his tax returns as soon as the president released his birth certificate, so the ball is in his court now and I know everybody is anxious to see his tax returns over the last 10 years. -- Robert Gibbs, former Press Secretary to President Obama

Gibbs is a loser. -- Donald Trump, in "response" to Gibbs' comment

Ari Melber of The Nation on Donald Trump's none-too-coded racism card -- a very fine analysis.

David Remnick of the New Yorker: "... to do what Trump has done (and he is only the latest and loudest and most spectacularly hirsute) is a conscious form of race-baiting, of fear-mongering.

I’ve come to New Hampshire today because I’m very concerned.  I want to see the original long-form certificate of Donald Trump’s Republican registration. -- Sen. Rand Paul

David Neiwert of Crooks & Liars: "Obama actually released a birth certificate back in 2008 -- but it wasn't enough to satisfy nutcases like Trump and his political adviser, WorldNutDaily's Joseph Farah. Trump has nothing to be proud of: Indeed, he owes the president an apology -- for smearing his name and casting doubt on his birth and citizenship. Not that we'll ever get it. After all, Being Republican Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry."

Jim Fallows: "I wonder how many people think Donald Trump is in a position to judge Obama's smarts.... ** There is no avoiding the racist connotation of saying that a successful black person got there -- wink wink -- through special treatment.... Yesterday, about half of all Republicans thought Obama was foreign born, and therefore an illegal occupant of the White House.... Here we have a wonderful real-world test: if "actual knowledge" mattered, the number of people who thought Obama was foreign-born would approach zero by next week -- with exceptions for illiterates, the mentally disabled, paranoid schizophrenics, etc. My guess is that the figures will barely change."

** "Dumber than You Think." Joshua Green of The Atlantic: "... Donald Trump's presidential candidacy is presumed by most people to be a stunt designed to goose ratings for his television show, 'Celebrity Apprentice' on NBC. But while Trump has gotten plenty of airtime by suggesting, wrongly, that the president was not born in the United States, Nielsen rating for 'Celebrity Apprentice' are lower than they were a year ago -- and dropping fast. One reason Trump's audience is abandoning him may be that, according to demographic research... , the audience for 'Celebrity Apprentice' is among the most liberal in primetime television.... Rather than add viewers, Trump foolishly appears to be driving them away."

"A Certificate of Embarrassment." New York Times Editors: "... the birther question was never really about citizenship; it was simply a proxy for those who never accepted the president’s legitimacy, for a toxic mix of reasons involving ideology, deep political anger and, most insidious of all, race. It was originally promulgated by fringe figures of the radical right, but mainstream Republican leaders allowed it to simmer to satisfy those who are inflamed by Mr. Obama’s presence in the White House."

They Have No Shame: The disgusting Daily Caller: "Republican leaders distanced themselves from the White House’s release of President Obama’s birth certificate Wednesday, calling it a 'sideshow' and a 'distraction' and knocked the administration for releasing it." CW: of course this is after these same "leaders" stoked the story for two years. I guess it wasn't a "sideshow" for them to aid & abet the birther story, but it is for the President to try to lay it to rest.

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

Politico: "House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan called for ending oil subsidies Thursday, further complicating Republican efforts to stay on message about rising gas prices. The Wisconsin Republican told constituents at a Waterford, Wis., town hall meeting that he agreed that federal oil subsidies ought to end. ...

... He Was for Them before He Was against Them. Think Progress: "But Ryan voted twice this year to actually extend subsidies to oil companies...."

Wall Street Journal: "A day after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) put Republicans on the spot by saying he will bring the House Republicans’ budget proposal up for a vote, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) turned the tables by exercising his legislative prerogative to call for a vote on President Barack Obama’s budget."

Bloomberg: "The Dollar Index slid to the lowest level since 2008, Treasuries rose and gold rallied to a record after economic growth slowed. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index climbed an almost three-year high as rising earnings and takeovers overshadowed the report on gross domestic product." Related New York Times story here.

"The Corporate Court." Washington Post: "Large corporations won a substantial victory at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, as ideologically split justices ruled that consumers may not band together in class-action arbitration to pursue their complaints. The specific case involved cellphones and a familiar contract that requires customers to press claims through arbitration rather than lawsuits. Such ubiquitous contracts, which mandate individual rather than group claims, are becoming standard for companies offering loans, cable service, credit cards and even employment." The decision, concurring opinion & dissent are here (pdf).

The Hill: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will hold a vote on Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) budget in an effort to divide the Senate GOP conference. Reid said on a conference call with reporters on Wednesday that he would hold a vote, saying it would give the Senate GOP an opportunity to say where it stands." ...

... AND, in the same vein -- TPM:: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) ... said he would hold a vote as soon as possible on a bill to eliminate the tax breaks for the five largest oil companies, Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips, which have reported record profits in recent weeks and months."

The Hill: "Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) announced Wednesday he will appoint Rep. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) to fill Sen. John Ensign's (R-Nev.) seat."

AP: "The death toll from severe storms that punished five Southern U.S. states jumped to a staggering 178 after Alabama canvassed its hard-hit counties for a new tally of lives lost. Alabama's state emergency management agency said early Thursday it had confirmed 128 deaths, up from at least 61 earlier." New York Times Update here.

AP: "A military court in Bahrain on Thursday convicted four Shiite protesters and sentenced them to death for the killing of two policemen during anti-government demonstrations last month in the Gulf kingdom, state media said. Three other Shiite activists, who were also on trial, were sentenced to life in prison for their role in the policemen’s deaths."

The Commentariat -- April 27

By popular request, I'm running an open thread comments page in Off Times Square today. Comments on Brooks yesterday were, well, lively.

A Bizarro Moment in American History. President Obama releases his long-form birth certificate:

... Okay, Birthers, here it is.

     ... Click on the certificate to see a slightly larger image. To examine the certificate in any size you want, go to this White House page. A pdf of the President's & his counsel's correspondence with the Hawaii Department of Health is here. ...

... Trump responds in Trump fashion: "Today I am very proud of myself...."

     ... "An Embarrassment to the Country." Adam Serwer in the Washington Post: "... those who fostered doubts about the president’s citizenship are unlikely to relent in the face of factual proof, because birtherism was never about the facts. For its most ardent proponents, it was and is about the inability to accept the legitimacy of a black man in the White House. Nothing about the decision to release the president’s birth certificate can change that." ...

     ... Ali Weinberg of NBC News has some more blogger reactions, many of which are predictably ridiculous. For instance, winger-blogger & CNN contributing correspondent (or whatever the hell CNN calls him) Erick Erickson now demands to see the President's college transcripts. Loons!

** New York Times Editors: "Less than a year before the 2012 presidential voting begins, Republican legislatures and governors across the country are rewriting voting laws to make it much harder for the young, the poor and African-Americans — groups that typically vote Democratic — to cast a ballot. Spreading fear of a nonexistent flood of voter fraud, they are demanding that citizens be required to show a government-issued identification before they are allowed to vote. Republicans have been pushing these changes for years, but now more than two-thirds of the states have adopted or are considering such laws. The Advancement Project, an advocacy group of civil rights lawyers, correctly describes the push as 'the largest legislative effort to scale back voting rights in a century.'”

Michael Shear of the New York Times offers five reasons Republicans are opting out of the 2012 presidential race. CW: my reason -- why work so hard only to be an also-ran?

David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "Ben Bernanke ... will hold a news conference" at 2:15 pm ET. In the spirit of democratic accountability, [the media] should ask hard questions — and we shouldn’t let him get away with the evasions and half-answers that members of Congress too often allow Fed chairmen during their appearances on Capitol Hill. One question more than any than other is crying out for an answer: Why has Mr. Bernanke decided to accept widespread unemployment for years on end, even though he believes he has the power to reduce it?" Washington Post story by Neil Irwin here. ...

... Annie Lowrey in Slate: "... the press conferences hardly imply the bank is headed for Oprah-type revelations. It remains an opaque, tealeaf-manufacturing institution. In fact, the press conference itself seems designed to not make news. It is mostly a symbolic gesture.... Expect non-answers, for the most part...." CW: ironically (or on purpose), at the moment Ben Bernanke poses as the Non-Oprah, President Obama & First Lady Michelle Obama wil be sitting on Oprah's couch. (see today's President's Calendar near the bottom of the right column). ...

     ... Paul Krugman Update: "Bernanke wimps out."

... "Private Gains, Public Losses." Economist Simon Johnson: "... the banks blew themselves up at great cost to the American people, with major negative global implications. Most of the public-debt increase in the US and elsewhere is not due to any kind of discretionary fiscal stimulus; it’s all about the loss of tax revenue that comes with a deep recession. (And the Bush administration’s tax cuts for the wealthiest, unfunded Medicare prescription benefit, and debt-financed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have severely weakened the long-term fiscal outlook.) Finally, the cost of the crisis is millions of homes lost and lives damaged, some permanently."

Jennifer Steinhauer & Carl Hulse of the New York Times: "After 10 days of trying to sell constituents on their plan to overhaul Medicare, House Republicans in multiple districts appear to be increasingly on the defensive, facing worried and angry questions from voters and a barrage of new attacks from Democrats and their allies." ...

... A Preview of the Summer of 2011. Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico: "Record crowds of supporters and opponents flooded town hall meetings throughout southeastern Wisconsin on Tuesday to hear Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) defend his plan to trim government spending — including controversial changes to the Medicare program. In the district’s Democratic stronghold of Kenosha, at least 200 people were left outside once the 300-seat auditorium filled to capacity. The people in the crowd largely opposed the Ryan plan, holding signs such as 'RyanCare = Dying Bare,' 'Leave Medicare Alone' or simply, 'Save Medicare!'" Here's a brief video from the Kenosha meeting:

... Mark Schlueb of the Orlando Sentinel: "A town hall meeting held in Orlando by U.S. Rep. Dan Webster degenerated into bedlam Tuesday, with members of the crowd shouting down the freshman Republican congressman and yelling at one another.... Webster beat Democrat U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson last year. But the 8^th Congressional District has a Democrat majority, and the party hopes to take the seat back in 2012." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. Here's video that is part of a related article by Scott Keyes of Think Progress:

     ... WFTV 9 Orlando has more video here.

... "We just feel like sitting ducks."Zaid Jilani of Think Progress: In New Hampshire, constituents are polite to Republican Rep. Charles Bass, but they're not favorably impressed with the Ryan/Republican budget. With video. ...

... Rachel Maddow has a great segment on citizen reaction to the Ryan/ Republican budget:

... Say What? David Nather of Politico: "Speaker John Boehner has given an interview in which he said Ryan’s plan was an idea 'worthy of consideration' and that he wasn’t 'wedded to it.' Democrats and liberal groups said Boehner’s comments to ABC News, in an interview posted Tuesday afternoon, make it sound like he’s backpedaling from the House vote two weeks ago in which all but four Republicans voted for Ryan’s budget plan [emphasis added] — including the Medicare overhaul that’s raising so many questions at their town hall meetings. Here's the interview:

      ... The whole interview is interesting. The part where Boehner backs off the Ryan budget he got his Caucus to vote for en masse comes about 2:45 min. in. ...

... AND as Brian Beutler of TPM points out, in the ABC News interview, Boehner "admitted what few members of his own party will admit...: that the GOP's Medicare privatization plan is similar in many key respects to the health care law they have spent the last two years demonizing." ...

... Economist Mark Thoma, in the Fiscal Times, explains why the voucher system, which the Ryan plan mandates to replace Medicare, would lead to rising, not falling, healthcare costs. ...

... Economist Dean Baker in TPM: "Twenty five million people are unemployed, underemployed or out of the workforce altogether..., millions of homeowners are underwater in their mortgage and facing the loss of their homes..., tens of millions of baby boomers are at the edge of retirement and have just lost their life savings," but all Washington is talking about is the deficit. And they're not serious about that; if they were, the Congressional Progressive Caucus's budget proposal "would be very much at the center of the debate." Thanks to Trish R. for the link.

Steve Benen: "It's important to appreciate the evolution of House Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) rhetoric when it comes to raising the debt ceiling. This matters because, as we get closer to a crisis of Republicans' own making, Boehner is become more reckless and irresponsible, not less."

New York Times Editors: "If there was any lingering doubt, the latest data confirm that housing is still in a deep and broad recession. In the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price report for 20 large cities, house prices in February fell to a level last seen in April 2009 — their lowest point in the bust. In a Census Bureau report, new home sales in March remained near their lowest levels since records were first kept in 1963.... How much worse they will need to get before regulators, lawmakers and the Obama administration make an all-out effort to fix the problem."

Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "The nation’s main firefighters’ union, long a strong supporter of Democratic candidates, announced on Tuesday that it would indefinitely suspend all contributions to federal candidates out of frustration with Congressional Democrats who, union officials say, have not fought harder against budget cuts and antiunion legislation. The union, the International Association of Fire Fighters, said it would focus its contributions and energies on state and local races because many legislatures have sought to curtail collective bargaining or otherwise weaken public-sector unions." CW: this is what happens when Democrats act like Republicans.

** CW: As Karen Garcia and I have been say for months, President Obama is a moderate Republican. Now Ezra Klein has taken note: "... the position that Obama and the Democrats have staked out is the very position that moderate Republicans staked out in the early ’90s — and often, well into the 2000s.... It appears that as Democrats moved to the right to pick up Republican votes, Republicans moved to the right to oppose Democratic proposals." Klein gives numerous examples of Obama policies that mirror those of Republican leaders.

Make Medicare Itself a "Death Panel." Ezra Klein: one way to substantially cut Medicare costs -- require every recipient to sign a living will mandating that doctors not prolong our lives by extraordinary (and very costly) measures. CW: I have a living will, my husband has a living will, but I don't think a single politician in today's political climate would make Medicare benefits contingent on living wills. ...

     ... Update: What Klein really says is that the Medicare-required living will could include any instructions. Klein is betting that most people would choose not to ask for extraordinary measures. It was Andrew Sullivan, whom Klein quotes, who suggested, "If everyone aged 40 or over simply made sure we appointed someone to be our power-of-attorney and instructed that person not to prolong our lives by extraordinary measures if we lost consciousness in a long, fatal illness or simply old age." Sullivan suggests the living will be completely voluntary. Thanks to reader Trish R. for catching my error.

If you read this article in the New York Times, by Trip Gabriel, you will be left with the impression that Jeb Bush is a marvelous advocate for education reform. Well, he isn't. Jeb Bush is a marvelous advocate for taking public money out of public schools & putting it into private education. He's into teaching to the test, too. And his very favorite cause of all is to break teachers unions, something he tried to do while Governor of Florida, & tried to do again after he left office. The article tells you that Bill Gates is among the Bush foundation donors. It doesn't mention that his biggest backers are for-profit schools. Jennie Smith of the Miami Examiner has some of the story here and here.

Scott Shane of the New York Times: "On Monday, hours after ... WikiLeaks, The New York Times and other news organizations began publishing the documents online, the Justice Department informed Guantánamo defense lawyers that the documents remained legally classified.... Because the lawyers have security clearances, they are obligated to treat the readily available files 'in accordance with all relevant security precautions and safeguards' — handling them, for example, only in secure government facilities, said the notice from the department’s Court Security Office. It is only the latest absurdist challenge posed by the flood of classified material obtained by WikiLeaks over the past year...."

Roy Barnes of the AP: "Being against a president over his policies is one thing, but being petty over everything Obama says and does reflects the mean-spiritedness of many in the conservative movement."

Right Wing World *

I went to work at 11 years old. I became governor. It’s not a big deal. Work doesn’t hurt anybody. -- Gov. Paul LePage, Maine, on why child labor laws should be rolled back

Putting Kids to Work! Here's Maine Republican/Tea Party Gov. Paul LePage trying to justify his plan to gut child labor laws, a plan which is probably the most oppressive idea I've heard among all the oppressive ideas state Republicans have dreamed up this year:

     ... One problem with LePage's argument: it ain't true. Daily Kos: "He describes the bill affecting 14 and 15 year olds, when in fact it lowers wages for people up to 20 years old and eliminates the limit on hours a 16 year old can work on a school day."

(... Missed this one from April 23: Tom Bell of Maine Today (okay, Maine a Few Days Ago) "A federal judge ruled Friday that Gov. Paul LePage did not violate the free speech clause of the First Amendment when he ordered a mural removed from the headquarters of the Maine Department of Labor.")

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Fatah and Hamas, the rival Palestinian movements, announced an agreement in principle on Wednesday to end a years-long internal Palestinian schism." Haaretz story here.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will hold a press conference at 2:15 pm ET. Related stories in today's Commentariat. Post-presser New York Times story: "The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, defended his management of the nation’s economy on Wednesday, arguing that the central bank was doing all it could to increase employment without unduly risking higher inflation." Update: what Bernanke said, via Reuters:

NBC News: "Eight American troops and a U.S. contractor died Wednesday after an Afghan military pilot opened fire during a meeting at Kabul airport — the deadliest episode to date of an Afghan turning against his coalition partners, officials said. The Afghan officer, who was a veteran military pilot, fired on the Americans after an argument, the Afghan Defense Ministry said."

In a letter to Congressional leaders yesterday, President Obama wrote, "I ... urge you to take immediate action to eliminate unwarranted tax breaks for the oil and gas industry, and to use those dollars to invest in clean energy to reduce our dependence on foreign oil." Here's the Washington Post's story on the President's letter.

National Journal: "Vermont is on the fast track to becoming the first state with universal health care with the passage of a single-payer health care bill on Tuesday. The Vermont Senate approved the bill 21-9 to offer government-funded health insurance to all state residents. The bill will now go to a conference committee, where the House and Senate will hash out the differences in the bill before sending it to Gov. Peter Shumlin, a Democrat. Shumlin will have to obtain approval from the Obama administration before he could begin to implement the single-payer system, which would begin in 2013."

Washington Post: "President Obama is expected to announce long-anticipated changes in his national security team this week, including a new ambassador to Afghanistan.... The officials said that Ryan C. Crocker, a five-time ambassador who retired in 2009 after wartime service in Iraq, is likely to be named to take over the U.S. Embassy in Kabul...." AP story here.

     Politico Update: "... President Barack Obama has chosen a consummate Washington insider, CIA director Leon Panetta, to guide the Pentagon through what promises to be a turbulent period of transition and given Panetta’s old job to Gen. David Petraeus.... Talking to reporters this morning, White House press secretary Jay Carney would not discuss the appointments, which were confirmed by a source familiar with the decision, and said the White House will have be no personnel announcements until Thursday." Update: New York times story here.

AP: "The Syrian army sent more tanks and reinforcements into Daraa on Wednesday as part of a widening crackdown against opponents of President Bashar Assad's authoritarian regime, and gunfire and sporadic explosions were heard in the tense southern city.... Security forces conducted sweeping arrests and raids elsewhere in the country, witnesses said."

The Commentariat -- April 26

The comments page for David Brooks is up on Off Times Square. Karen Garcia & I have posted our comments -- hours before you'll see them (if ever) on the New York Times site. Post your own. Update: Garcia & I have made the NYT cut, but Akhilleus, who now has posted on Off Times Square, has not.

My favorite definition of a humanist: 'One who strives to behave decently and honorably with no expectation of eternal rewards or punishments.' -- David Clark, commenting on Off Times Square on Ross Douthat's column

The Guantánamo Files page in the Guardian provides a pretty handy way to review the newly-released WikiLeaks documents. ...

... New York Times Editors: "The internal documents from the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, published in The Times on Monday were a chilling reminder of the legal and moral disaster that President George W. Bush created there. They describe the chaos, lawlessness and incompetence in his administration’s system for deciding detainees’ guilt or innocence and assessing whether they would be a threat if released." ...

... Scott Shane & Benjamin Weiser of the New York Times: "The newly revealed assessments ... have revived the dispute, nearly as old as the prison, over whether mistreatment of some prisoners there and the prison’s operation outside the criminal justice system invalidate the government’s conclusions about the detainees. Hina Shamsi, director of the national security project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the assessments 'are rife with uncorroborated evidence, information obtained through torture, speculation, errors and allegations that have been proven false.'"

... Richard Serrano of the Los Angeles Times: "Fresh and often chilling portraits of [Khalid Shaikh] Mohammed and the other most-prized 'high value' detainees at Guantanamo emerged from the latest release of classified material by WikiLeaks...." ...

... Glenn Greenwald: "How could anyone possibly justify prosecuting WikiLeaks for disseminating classified information while not prosecuting these newspapers who have done exactly the same thing?" Greenwald goes on to contrast U.S. (New York Times & Washington Post) coverage with British stories on the files. Link to the Guardian stories Greenwald highlights here. ...

... Yesterday, I linked this WashPo article on why President Obama failed to close Gitmo. Marcy Wheeler zeroes in on the important take-aways from the Post's reporting.

A friend sent me this video on how to deal with a racist someone who makes a racist remark:

What the Ryan/Republican budget plan really means:

By Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Thanks to A. Friend for sending it my way.

Like the odds of typing monkeys eventually keying in the complete works of Shakespeare, there's a chance Donald Trump will get something right. He just did:

The seniors are afraid. The plan Paul Ryan put forth has made the Democrats so happy. -- Donald Trump 

Michael Fletcher of the Washington Post: "The state funds that pay pension and health-care benefits to retired teachers, corrections officers and millions of other public workers faced a cumulative shortfall of at least $1.26 trillion at the end of fiscal 2009, according to a new report. The study, to be released Tuesday by the Pew Center on the States, found that the pension and health-care funding gap increased by 26 percent over the previous year. Pew officials said the growing shortfall was driven by inadequate state contributions, an aging population and market losses that accompanied the recession." ...

... Michael Cooper & Mary Williams Walsh of the New York Times: "Conventional wisdom and the laws and constitutions of many states have long held that the pensions being earned by current government workers are untouchable. But as the fiscal crisis has lingered, officials in strapped states from California to Illinois have begun to take a second look, to see whether there might be loopholes allowing them to cut the pension benefits of current employees." ...

... Paul Krugman debunks the "zombie" claim that "there has been a huge expansion in the federal government under Obama.... What we’re seeing isn’t some drastic expansion of Big Government; we’re seeing the government we already had, responding to a terrible economic slump."

Steve Mufson & Jon Cohen of the Washington Post: "The Post-ABC poll shows that 60 percent of independents who say they’ve been hit hard by surging gas prices also say they definitely won’t support Obama in his bid for reelection. In a hypothetical matchup with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the top GOP performer in the Post-ABC poll, Romney wins by 24 points among the independents who have taken a severe financial hit because of gas prices, and the president is up 7 percentage points among other independents.

Andrew Cohen of The Atlantic: "Former Solicitor General Paul Clement took quite the parting shot at his former Washington law firm Monday when he announced that he would leave King & Spalding so that he could continue to represent House Republicans in their effort to defend the Defense of Marriage Act." Read Cohen's whole post.

Nate Silver "on the largely irrelevant news about Haley Barbour not running for President." CW: an interesting post in which Silver explains why Barbour appears to be shrewder than the Serious People. ...

... Karen Garcia is not joining the Obama campaign. Here's the video that Garcia found so unconvincing. It's a snoozer:

Fox "News" Shocker! President Obama Didn't Tell You Sunday Was Easter. Steve Benen: "Fox News today slammed President Obama for not issuing a proclamation acknowledging Easter. (Somehow, Christians managed to hear about the holiday anyway.) Conservative activists quickly followed suit.... It's a garbage story, even by the standards of GOP media.... President Obama hosted an Easter prayer breakfast; the Obamas attended Easter services; and the White House hosted a big Easter Egg Roll for families today. No proclamation was issued, but no other modern presidents -- from either party -- have issued Easter proclamations, either."

After auditing the Obamas' tax return, Stephen Colbert assesses the Republican field of presidential candidates, with emphasis on the Donald:

... Hooray! More Conspiracy Theories from the Donald. Beth Fouhy of the AP: "... Donald Trump suggested in an interview Monday that President Barack Obama had been a poor student who did not deserve to be admitted to the Ivy League universities he attended. Trump ... offered no proof for his claim but said he would continue to press the matter as he has the legitimacy of the president's birth certificate. 'I heard he was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?' Trump said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I'm thinking about it, I'm certainly looking into it. Let him show his records." ...

... PLUS ... CNN: Trump claims Barack Obama's birth certificate is "missing." Too bad that "CNN's Gary Tuchman also interviewed the former director of the Hawaii Department of Health, who said she has seen the original birth certificate in the vault at the Department of Health." ...

... AND ... Fox "News": "Donald Trump slammed Robert De Niro Monday, following the Oscar-winner’s criticisms of him this weekend, telling Fox News that the actor is 'not the brightest bulb on the planet.'"

Jonathan Chait of The New Republic. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker makes a gross misstatement about Medicaid, which he wants to dismantle. CW: It's always hard to know when Walker is out-and-out lying and when he just doesn't know WTF he's talking about.

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

Politico: "The Justice Department has dropped its long-running criminal investigation of a lawyer who publicly admitted leaking information about President George W. Bush’s top-secret warrantless wiretapping program to The New York Times – disclosures that Bush denounced as a breach of national security and that stoked a congressional debate about whether the government had overstepped its authority.... The decision not to prosecute former Justice Department lawyer Thomas Tamm means it is unlikely that anyone will ever be charged for the disclosures that led to the Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning story in December 2005...." Update: the New York Times story is here.

New York Times: "Federal investigators said Monday that they had discovered flaws in the riveting of the roof of the Southwest Airlines plane that tore open in flight on April 1, a finding that experts said probably showed manufacturing defects.

Still Playing Chicken. Politico: "Speaker John Boehner won’t guarantee a vote on raising the debt limit, the latest threat in an increasingly high stakes game of chicken with the White House over whether Congress will inch closer to letting the nation default on its credit."

AP: "A recall effort targeting two Democratic state senators has fallen short at the deadline. Organizers had until Monday afternoon to turn in petitions to recall Sen. Lena Taylor of Milwaukee and Sen. Fred Risser of Madison. But the organizers failed to meet the deadline."

AP: "Gunfire reverberated Tuesday in the southern Syrian city of Daraa where the dead still lay unclaimed in the streets a day after a brutal government crackdown on the popular revolt against President Bashar Assad, residents said." ...

... Al Jazeera Update: "As the Syrian government intensifies its crackdown against pro-democracy protesters, the international community steps up its pressure on president Bashar al-Assad to stop the bloodletting. In a session on Tuesday, members of the UN Security Council discussed the uptick in violence, but failed to issue a collective statement. Still, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, condemned the violence against 'peaceful protesters' and called on the Syrian government to respect the people's rights to freedom of expression."

New York Times: "The Ford Motor Company reported on Tuesday its largest first-quarter profit since 1998, despite a shift in sales to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars."