FRIDAY’S MINI-REPORT…. Today’s edition of quick hits:
* At least 60 people were killed in two more suicide-bomb attacks in Baghdad today. In just 24 hours, “five bombings have killed at least 140 people and wounded 240.”
* The latest from Pakistan: “Some Taliban pulled back from a key district not far from the capital on Friday, but remained in control of the area, as the military defended its response, saying it was ‘determined to root out the menace of terrorism.’”
* President Obama gave a speech on higher ed today, and talked a bit about curbing the spiraling costs of college tuition.
* The “swine flu” is hitting Mexico in a very big way.
* Ford lost $1.4 billion in the first quarter. That, oddly enough, was considered good news.
* John McCain thinks DHS fired the official who prepared the report on potentially violent right-ring radicals. As is often the case, McCain is apparently confused.
* You don’t say: “For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming…. But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.”
* Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said any effort to hold Bush administration officials accountable for criminal behavior will lead Republicans to “go to war” and launch a “scorched-earth policy.”
* Steve Schmidt, the chief strategist from the McCain/Palin campaign, believes Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008 was “the unfinished Bobby Kennedy campaign” from 1968.
* Schmidt also believes the Republican Party is a “shrinking entity.”
* On a related note, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) seems confused (again) about what carbon dioxide is.
* Harry Reid isn’t ready to impeach Jay Bybee.
* Wouldn’t it be great to be able to just look at a detainee and know instantly whether he or she is a national security threat?
* Ambushing Bill O’Reilly’s ambusher.
* Washington state is ending felon disenfranchisement. Good.
* I suspected conservative Republicans to freak out over the decision to make Plan B available without a prescription. I just didn’t expect the reaction to be this nauseating.
* And Bill Maher ponders whether the Republican Party is “divorced from reality.” Take a guess how he answers the question.
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
