TUESDAY’S MINI-REPORT…. Today’s edition of quick hits:
* Baghdad: “A suicide bomber struck early on Tuesday at an army recruiting office here, killing dozens in the first major bombing of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan — a period made more fraught than in previous years by the looming deadline for American forces to replace their combat mission here with a training role.” The toll so far: 48 dead and 129 wounded.
* Crisis in Pakistan: “With disastrous flooding spreading yet more widely in Pakistan, reports of looting and protests over food on Tuesday deepened the sense of desperation across Punjab Province, the country’s most populous region and its agricultural hub.”
* It wasn’t much, but I’m so desperate for good economic news that a slight improvement in the housing market and a jump in industrial production seemed huge.
* The things one finds when cleaning up: “The CIA has videotapes, after all, of interrogations in a secret overseas prison of admitted 9/11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh. Discovered in a box under a desk at the CIA, the tapes could reveal how foreign governments aided the United States in holding and interrogating suspects. And they could complicate U.S. efforts to prosecute Binalshibh, who has been described as one of the ‘key plot facilitators’ in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.”
* A step in the right direction: “The White House is preparing a package of measures that would expand opportunities for Americans to travel to Cuba and send money there, congressional and Obama administration officials said Tuesday.” The measures won’t need congressional support.
* Great pieces on Park51 from Dana Milbank and Peter Beinart.
* Don’t expect George W. Bush to step up and set his party straight.
* Rep. Michael Arcuri (D) of New York really ought to be ashamed of himself.
* Jonathan Cohn is back from New Orleans, offering an in-depth look at the city five years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. His first installment was yesterday, the second was published this morning. Worth a read.
* She’s absolutely right: “Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has taken up the cause of reforming state judicial campaign and election systems, writing that the ‘crisis of confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary is real and growing.’”
* Yet another worthwhile stimulus project that wouldn’t exist if the GOP had its way.
* I think Roger Simon intended this to be tongue-in-cheek. I also think a lot of folks didn’t pick up on the sarcasm.
* Daniel Luzer: “[T]he majority of students who attend for-profit schools don’t pay back their loans. This isn’t really much of a surprise. More interestingly, however, this indicates that loan repayment rates are pretty bad everywhere.”
* Elon Green lists the “10 Young Right-Wingers Being Prepped to Take Over the Conservative Movement.”
* The estimable Anonymous Liberal: “If terrorists ‘hate us because of our freedoms,’ then failing to respect those freedoms amounts to appeasement, right? … That makes Bill Kristol the Neville Chamberlain of this debate. If he was capable of logical thought, his head might explode.”
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
