THURSDAY’S MINI-REPORT…. Today’s edition of quick hits:
* Madoff, go directly to jail.
* Three consecutive good days on Wall Street? Haven’t seen that in a while.
* Muntadar “shoe thrower” al-Zaidi is sentenced to three years behind bars.
* Obama issues his first signing statement. The NYT cited law prof David Golove, who specializes in executive powers, and who concluded that “the prerogatives invoked by Mr. Obama were relatively uncontroversial.” Tim Fernholz has a good item on this, too.
* Under Bush, the FDA was a complete mess. Under Obama, Margaret Hamburg will help fix it.
* Americans trust government more than businesses to fix the economy. (On a related note, Kevin Drum had a fine post on what happens next.)
* The vetting process has apparently tripped up another key Treasury Department nominee. Unless his transgression was really serious, I’m beginning to think the administration is going to have to drop their standards a little.
* Speaking of nominations, the right fought very hard to derail Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, and Deputy Attorney General David Ogden. Their efforts were for naught.
* CBS News’ Chip Reid drops the pretense of objectivity.
* Apparently, the House Blue Dog Caucus wasn’t a big enough hurdle to governing; now we’re getting a Senate version.
* I’m beginning to think the LA Times‘ Andrew Malcolm isn’t good at his job.
* I really loathe voter-suppression tactics like these.
* Obama will be the first president in over 100 years to skip his first Gridiron Dinner.
* Jim Cramer will appear on “The Daily Show” tonight, but not before he tries to lower the temperature on their “feud.”
* My new favorite oxymoron: “Fox Facts.”
* Rick Santorum thinks “the fundamentals of American economy is [sic] still strong.” He wasn’t kidding.
* Raise your hand if you think Michael Steele knows anything about music.
* And finally, reader J.M. alerted me to this amusing story about prominent Illinois Republican Gary Skoien, whose wife beat the hell out of him when she found him at home with two prostitutes at 1 a.m. Skoien said it was a big misunderstanding: “No money was exchanged. Nobody was naked.”
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
