MONDAY’S MINI-REPORT…. Today’s edition of quick hits:
* European debt crisis: “European leaders agreed early Monday to provide a huge rescue package of nearly $1 trillion to combat the debt crisis that has engulfed Europe…. In an extraordinary session that lasted into the early morning hours, finance ministers from the European Union agreed on a deal that would provide $560 billion in new loans and $76 billion under an existing lending program.”
* Wall Street was pleased.
* Paul Krugman considers what the European plan will (and won’t) do.
* Iraq: “Nearly 100 people died and at least 300 others were injured Monday in a series of attacks that crisscrossed Iraq, targeting security forces, factory workers and shoppers on what authorities called the deadliest day of the year.”
* BP Oil Spill: “BP on Monday resumed injecting dispersants into the gusher a mile below the Gulf of Mexico, as it weighed its next steps. Ideas include “top hats” and “junk shots” to try to contain the spewing crude.”
* The twists and turns of British politics: “Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Monday offered to step down by this fall as he announced the opening of formal negotiations with a rival party to form a “progressive alliance” and block the Conservative Party from retaking power in Britain.”
* Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) conceded today that it’s hard for him to envision a GOP filibuster of Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court nomination.
* For all the talk about Kagan’s lack of experience as a judge, more than a third of the justices who’ve served on the Supreme Court were never judges before their high court tenures.
* Probably worth bookmarking for future reference: “Myths and falsehoods about Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court nomination.”
* By Sean Hannity’s reasoning, President Obama should nominate liberal judges and Republican senators should “go along.”
* It troubles me that Republicans consider Fred Malek acceptable for polite company.
* Fact-checking the Sunday shows.
* Fox News personality Mike Huckabee is strikingly bad at math.
* The idea of taxing colleges is now apparently no longer confided to one ill-conceived budget plan in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
* And Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) explained today that it doesn’t much matter who President Obama nominates, given the knee-jerk reactions from many on the right. “We have some Republicans who would automatically oppose anybody who was nominated,” Leahy said. “The President could nominate Moses the Law Giver. In fact I told the President, I said you realize if you’d nominated Moses the Law Giver, somebody would raise, ‘but he doesn’t have a birth certificate! Where’s his birth certificate!’”
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
