FRIDAY’S MINI-REPORT…. Today’s edition of quick hits:
* It passed with zero GOP votes: “More than a year after the near-collapse of Wall Street plunged the economy into crisis, the House on Friday approved the most sweeping overhaul of the nation’s financial regulatory system since the Great Depression.”
* A cramdown measure was defeated in the House, thanks to Blue Dog Democrats and Republicans.
* Secretary of Defense Robert Gates expects new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.
* From 2004 to 2006, the lines were blurred out of existence: “Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.’s most sensitive activities –clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials.”
* It’s safe to say Greece is having some very serious fiscal problems.
* The latest retail-sales report looked pretty good.
* For reasons that I can’t begin to understand, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) thinks health care reform is still going too fast.
* Why students drop out of college.
* Krugman, who has defended the Fed chairman, today takes Bernanke to task.
* Matt Taibbi trashes President Obama and his economic team. Tim Fernholz describes Taibbi’s piece as “a factual mess,” “a conspiracy theorist’s dream,” “pernicious for a lot of journalistic reasons,” and sidestepping actual administration policy failures. “It’s almost as if he cherry-picked what he thought would fit with his narrative,” Fernholz adds. [Update: And Felix Salmon responds to Fernholz’s response.]
* Legislation related to a college football playoff is stalled in a House committee, but Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) hopes to get it moving in the Senate. President Obama has said he’d sign the bill into law.
* Good question: “Why does the LAT allow Andrew Malcolm to continue to misrepresent polling?”
* Josh Marshall catches CNN’s coverage yesterday on the Copenhagen conference: “First we hear Al Gore, discussing the evidence for warming. And after that, the latest from Sarah Palin discussing the science on her Facebook page. That’s the debate. Proud moment.”
* Bachmann kills what was left of irony: she told a crowd this week, referring to the Obama administration, “These people are not connected to reality.”
* I’ve been away from my desk most of the afternoon, and I’m just now catching up. I’ll have reports on some of the day’s late-breaking developments in the morning.
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
