Today’s edition of quick hits:
* More interesting intelligence: “U.S. officials say that Osama bin Laden kept a hand-written journal filled with planning ideas and details of operations. The journal was seized in the dramatic US raid.”
* Syria: “The Syrian military intensified a methodical, ferocious march across the country’s most restive locales on Wednesday, shelling the country’s third-largest city from tanks, forcing hundreds to flee and detaining hundreds more in what has emerged as one of the most brutal waves of repression since the Arab Spring began.”
* Libya: “Libyan rebel forces took control of the Misurata airport and swaths of territory around the besieged city Wednesday, residents and officials said, indicating that the tide might be turning, at least for now, in the bloodiest battle of Libya’s nearly three-month conflict.”
* Evidence of progress in Uganda: “Uganda’s parliament on Wednesday was forced to drop plans to debate a controversial bill that once proposed the death penalty for some gays and lesbians, but officials indicated lawmakers would debate it on Friday. U.S. leaders and rights groups have denounced the bill in recent days in hopes parliament will reject it.”
* Renewed outreach to the Muslim world: “The White House said Wednesday that President Obama planned to deliver an address in the coming days on the Middle East, in the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden…. Administration officials said Mr. Obama would use the speech to put the death of Bin Laden in the context of the broader political transformation in the region.”
* This is a story worth watching: “The Internal Revenue Service appears to have begun to enforce a tax on gifts to the non-profit organizations that were a key vehicle for anonymous politics in the last five years and had promised to play a large role in the presidential cycle, a move which could reshape the place of money in politics in 2012.”
* On a related note, the right’s complaints about the IRS’s move are wrong, but fun to mock.
* Health care reform advocates caught a break with random judge selection on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. The lineup at the 6th Circuit, meanwhile, isn’t encouraging at all.
* Democrats haven’t given up on the DREAM Act: “On the heels of President Obama’s renewed call to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws in Texas on Tuesday, Senate Democrats are reintroducing a bill that would give legal status to some illegal immigrants who came into the United States as children.”
* Good for Lynch: “New Hampshire’s Democratic Gov. John Lynch kept his promise and vetoed a bill Wednesday that bars unions from collecting a share of bargaining and administrative costs from non-members. Republican leaders have been working to get enough votes to override the veto.”
* What the right has in common with their sharia-loving foes.
* Koch money buys excessive influence at Florida State University.
* Par for the course: “Following the announcement of a new national emergency alert system that will alert the public to significant emergencies via mobile phone messages, right-wing media have attacked the plan, claiming that it will allow ‘Dear Leader Obama To Send You Text Messages.’ But the plan was implemented as a result of legislation introduced by GOP Sen. Jim DeMint that was overwhelmingly passed by Congress in 2006 and accompanied by an executive order signed by President Bush.”
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
