Today’s edition of quick hits:
* There was an 11th-hour Senate effort to prevent a widespread FAA shutdown. It looks like the effort failed, which means the House Republican stunt will cost Americans billions of dollars in uncollected taxes, and put tens of thousands of American jobs on hold for at least a month.
* The “relief rally” didn’t happen: “A Senate vote to pass the debt-ceiling plan on Tuesday may have averted the potential for the United States to default on its obligations, but it failed to lift investors’ spirits. The Dow Jones industrial average slumped 266 points by the close of trading, and all of the major Wall Street indexes shed more than 2 percent.”
* Fitch Ratings was satisfied enough with the debt deal that it won’t lower the United States’ credit rating.
* I suppose, by the right’s standards, this means Netanyahu and Obama are both anti-Israel? “In a dramatic policy shift, Israel’s prime minister has agreed to negotiate the borders of a Palestinian state based on the cease-fire line that marks off the West Bank, a TV station reported Monday.” For context, it’s worth noting that Netanyahu would accept those borders as part of a process whereby Palestinians acknowledge the right of Israel to exist.
* Syria: “After killing nearly 100 people in two days, Syrian troops tightened their siege on the city of Hama Tuesday by taking up positions near homes and sending residents fleeing for their lives.”
* Somalia: “The Shabab Islamist insurgent group, which controls much of southern Somalia, is blocking starving people from fleeing the country and setting up a cantonment camp where it is imprisoning displaced people who were trying to escape Shabab territory.”
* Good call: “A federal judge said yesterday that Planned Parenthood would probably succeed in overturning a new Kansas law that would deny the group access to federal family planning funding, saying he believes the law is unconstitutional and was intended to punish Planned Parenthood for advocating for abortion rights.”
* Alabama’s anti-immigrant law really is atrocious: “The Obama administration filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging Alabama’s recently passed immigration law.”
* Tim Geithner can’t leave his post because his successor couldn’t get confirmed.
* Joe Nocera appears to be on board with the “Tea Party Republicans = terrorists” line of argument.
* Interesting case: “A federal judge in Ohio said Monday that the Affordable Care Act does not provide for taxpayer funding for abortion. The statement was the cornerstone of the judge’s ruling to allow a defamation lawsuit brought against the Susan B. Anthony List by a former congressman to move forward.”
* Rep. Doug Laborn (R-Colo.) is sorry about the whole “tar baby” thing.
* Olbermann won’t be able to lure her away for a long while: MSNBC extended Rachel Maddow’s contract long before it expired.
* Daniel Luzer: “Student loans are a real financial bubble and this may start to become a big education problem, says a recent report by Moody’s about the student lending industry.”
* And Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is so concerned about health insurance plans covering birth control without co-pays that he delivered a speech warning of “a dying civilization.” That guy really isn’t well.
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
