As was speculated, Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI) will not be seeking reelection to the US Senate in 2012. This leaves an open race and a golden opportunity to bring back Russ Feingold to the US Senate. This also opens the door for Tea Party Republican Rep. Paul Ryan (R/TP-WI), to run and he is considering it. I would pay to see them debate, Russ would wipe the dais with Paul’s corporatist, Koch bought and paid for, bull pucks. Most likely, Ryan’s seat would also flip. Compared to Feingold, Ryan is no heavy weight and Wisconsin in ripe for the Democrats to win back. Certainly a win-win in the making.

Heavyweights Ryan, Feingold weigh Senate race in Wisconsin

The two candidates widely considered to be the top prospects to run for Wisconsin’s newly open Senate seat – GOP Rep. Paul Ryan and former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold – both left open the possibility of a 2012 bid on Friday.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said in a statement that he was “surprised” by Sen. Herb Kohl’s (D) announcement, and that he will “take some time over the next few days to discuss the news with my family and supporters before making any decision.”

Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has become a focal point for national Democrats, who have slammed his proposed budget as the “end of Medicare.” Democrats are already framing the 2012 elections as a referendum on Ryan’s budget plan, a debate that would be further fueled by Ryan’s entry into the Senate race.

snip

Former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) would likely be the first-choice candidate, according to one national Democrat. But Feingold isn’t likely to make a quick decision on the race.

In a statement issued through his Progressives United PAC, Feingold made no mention of the 2012 race, praising Kohl as someone who “has served the state with honor.”

But Feingold’s former chief of staff told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Friday that the former senator, who lost to Republican Ron Johnson last November, will come to a decision in “the coming months.”

Run, Russ, run. Please

I know there were a few people who actually believed that Donald Trump was a legitimate candidate who will be disappointed by his decision to pull out before he was actually in the race. Most never took this ploy as anything but a publicity stunt by low class, wealthy charlatan. Lawrence O’Donnell was betting he would withdraw as the contract for his NBC show, “The Apprentice” was up for renewal. O’Donnell called it a fake campaign, he was absolutely right. It’s May 16th and The Donald is just fired himself as a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: Trump Ditches Prez Race

Donald Trump Is Not Running For President

Donald Trump has announced that he is not running for president in 2012. “This decision does not come easily or without regret,” Trump said in a statement, “especially when my potential candidacy continues to be validated by ranking at the top of the Republican contenders in polls across the country.”

“I maintain the strong conviction that if I were to run,” he said, “I would be able to win the primary and ultimately, the general election.”

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Nicholas D. Kristoff: What Holbrooke Knew

When he was alive, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke was effectively gagged, unable to comment on what he saw as missteps of the Obama administration that he served. But as we face a crisis in Pakistan after the killing of Osama bin Laden, it’s worth listening to Holbrooke’s counsel – from beyond the grave.

As one of America’s finest strategic thinkers and special envoy to the Af-Pak region, Holbrooke represented the administration – but also chafed at aspects of the White House approach. In particular, he winced at the overreliance on military force, for it reminded him of Vietnam.

“There are structural similarities between Afghanistan and Vietnam,” he noted, in scattered reflections now in the hands of his widow, Kati Marton.

“He thought that this could become Obama’s Vietnam,” Marton recalled. “Some of the conversations in the Situation Room reminded him of conversations in the Johnson White House. When he raised that, Obama didn’t want to hear it.”

E. J. Dionne Jr.: Lincoln would weep at the GOP’s 2012 field

Republicans are unhappy with their field of presidential candidates and yearn for someone who will come along to save them. But here’s what the GOP doesn’t want to confront: its problem lies not in its candidates but in itself.

The candidates appear much smaller than they are because the party’s primary voters and core interest groups insist upon cutting them down to size. To win a Republican nomination, a candidate has to move right, recant absolutely any past position that violates the current conservative catechism and never dare to speak the truth that solving our deficit problem will require new revenue – a.k.a. taxes.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on image to enlarge

May 16 is the 136th day of the year (137th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 229 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1868, the U.S. Senate votes against impeaching President Andrew Johnson and acquits him of committing “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

In February 1868, the House of Representatives charged Johnson with 11 articles of impeachment for vague “high crimes and misdemeanors.” (For comparison, in 1998, President Bill Clinton was charged with two articles of impeachment for obstruction of justice during an investigation into his inappropriate sexual behavior in the White House Oval Office. In 1974, Nixon faced three charges for his involvement in the Watergate scandal.) The main issue in Johnson’s trial was his staunch resistance to implementing Congress’ Civil War Reconstruction policies. The War Department was the federal agency responsible for carrying out Reconstruction programs in the war-ravaged southern states and when Johnson fired the agency’s head, Edwin Stanton, Congress retaliated with calls for his impeachment.

Of the 11 counts, several went to the core of the conflict between Johnson and Congress. The House charged Johnson with illegally removing the secretary of war from office and for violating several Reconstruction Acts. The House also accused the president of hurling slanderous “inflammatory and scandalous harangues” against Congressional members. On February 24, the House passed all 11 articles of impeachment and the process moved into a Senate trial.

Poor Goldman Sachs. According to Megan McArdle, one of the Atlantic Monthly’s Wall St apologists, argued on CNN’s Your Money in a debate with Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi that the laws were too confusing and it would be too hard to figure out ig they did anything wrong. While conversely,  she insinuates that those who the toxic assets were sold to should have known what they were buying. Let’s blame the victims.  Megan even admits that she hasn’t read all the documents while Taibbi has. How does Megan have any credibility on this is beyond comprehension. Here are some of the “high” points from the transcript of the video:

MCARDLE: What we have to do is disclose. It’s perfectly legal for a dealership to sell me a car I’m not going to like or that’s too expensive for me. It’s not legal for them to sell me a car that’s not what they represented it as.

And we set certain legal minimum standards and that’s what happened here. At least, John Losera and all the devils who are here argues that he actually has gone through these documents and says that a lot of these things were disclosed. That in fact Goldman laid out in very lengthy detail all of the ways in which this could go wrong. I haven’t read the disclosure documents personally.

TAIBBI: I have.

MCARDLE: There are two competing versions of the story.

VELSHI: Matt, you’ve read them?

TAIBBI: Well, I’ve read all the documents in this report and I’ve also talked to some of the principals in this entire story. I definitely know some of the client that is Goldman was talking about were completely blindsided by the fact that, for instance.

They were buying assets out of Goldman’s own book when they were told that Goldman was buying these assets off the street. They definitely did not make key disclosures that they were legally obligated to make.

The People vs. Goldman Sachs

By Matt Taibbi

A Senate committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges

They weren’t murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.

Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn’t leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial.

What’s so hard to fathom, Megan? They committed fraud and then lied about the fraud. Lloyd Blenkenfein isn’t too big for a cell next to Bernie Madoff. The Justice Department and Eric Holder needs to get its act together.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) thinks that the right to health care is slavery and that the police could come to his house to “conscript” him to treat patients. If the right to health care makes doctors, nurses, et al, slaves, then the Constitution which bans slavery, enslaves lawyers. Rand, you really should have read the document that you took an oath to uphold, some libertarian you are.

President Obama in his Saturday address to the nation, announced another cave to the right

. . the administration would begin to hold annual auctions for oil and gas leases in the Alaska National Petroleum Reserve, a 23-million-acre tract on the North Slope of Alaska.

. . accelerate a review of the potential environmental impact of drilling off the southern and central Atlantic coast and will consider making some areas available for exploration. The move is a change from current policy, which puts the entire Atlantic Seaboard off limits to drilling until at least 2018.

. . provide incentives for oil companies to more quickly exploit leases they already hold. Tens of millions of acres onshore and offshore are under lease but have not been developed.

Not one of these actions will lower the price of gas at the pump or create jobs or cure our dependency on foreign oil, most of which comes from our northern neighbor, Canada. The cost of gas at the pumps is under direct control of the oil companies that are still being subsidized by tax payers even as they rake in billions in profits and use tax loop holes to pay no US taxes, instead they are receiving refunds. Crude oil prices are manipulated by speculation on the open market with little regulatory control by the government or the SEC. That so-called “revolutionary” Financial Regulation Bill is a sham. Just look at rising banking fees and your credit card bill, look at your shrinking pay check and the rise in cost of food, clothing and health care. I suggest you have a bucket handy.

Yes, tax payers are angry about the price of gas but we are also opposed to more drilling for limited resources that will not solve the immediate problem. Long term, we need to be investing in green energy, renewable solutions not investing in the oil companies. Short term, rein in the oil companies and speculators.

Americans are angry at the President for not regulating the speculators and oil companies. Americans are angry at for gouging at the pump.

Asked who is to blame, most Americans point to speculators and oil companies for the recent increase in gas prices, and three-quarters say that oil companies profits are too high.

Sixty-one percent of respondents say oil companies deserve a great deal of blame for prices, while 27% say they deserve some blame. Oil speculators also figure prominently in the blame game, with 59% saying they deserve a great deal of blame, while 31% say they deserve some blame.

Americans are angry with President Obama because again caves to the right and corporatists while ignoring what the American people are telling him and congress. Ignore us at your peril.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on image to enlarge

May 15 is the 135th day of the year (136th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 230 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1776, the Virginia Convention instructs its Continental Congress delegation to propose a resolution of independence from Great Britain, paving the way for the United States Declaration of Independence.

The Virginia Conventions were a series of five political meetings in the Colony of Virginiaduring the American Revolution. Because the House of Burgesses had been dissolved in 1774 by Royal Governor Lord Dunmore, the conventions served as a revolutionary provisional government until the establishment of the independent Commonwealth of Virginia in 1776.

The fifth convention began May 6, 1776 and met in Williamsburg. On May 15, the convention declared independence from Britain and adopted a set of three momentous resolutions: one calling for a declaration of rights for Virginia, one calling for establishment of a republican constitution, and a third calling for federal relations with whichever other colonies would have them and alliance with whichever foreign countries would have them. It also instructed its delegates to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to declare independence. Virginia’s congressional delegation was thus the only one under unconditional positive instructions to declare independence; Virginia was already independent, and so its convention did not want their state, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, to “hang separately.” According to James Madison’s correspondence for that day, Williamsburg residents marked the occasion by taking down the Union Jack from over the colonial capitol and running up a continental union flag.

On June 7, Richard Henry Lee, one of Virginia’s delegates to Congress, carried out these instructions and proposed independence in the language the convention had commanded him to use: that “these colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.” This paved the way for the American Declaration of Independence, which also reflected the idea that not one nation, but thirteen free and independent states were aborning on the east coast of North America.

The convention amended, and on June 12 adopted, George Mason‘s Declaration of Rights, a precursor to the United States Bill of Rights. On June 29, the convention approved the first Constitution of Virginia, which was also the first written constitution adopted by the people’s representatives in the history of the world. The convention chose Patrick Henry as the first governor of the new Commonwealth of Virginia, and he was inaugurated on June 29, 1776. Thus, Virginia had a functioning, permanent, republican constitution before July 4, 1776 — uniquely among the thirteen American colonies.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with Christiane Amanpour: Ms. Amanpour has an exclusive interview with South Carolina’s Republican Tea Bag governor, Nikki Haley.

Need I say more?

On a more serious topic, the economy, she talks with Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair, Former Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman and former Congressional Budget Office Director and McCain economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin about the battle over taxes and government spending.

Top foreign policy voices Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations, Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution and Anthony Shadid of The New York Times weigh in on the turbulent Arab spring.

The round table with the usual right wing suspects, George Will, Cokie Roberts and ABC News Political Director Amy Walter

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) discusses his plans to address the debt limit.

Plus: More from the CBS News Town Hall with President Obama on the Economy

The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests are Norah O’Donnell, MSNBC Chief Washington Correspondent, Howard Fineman, The Huffington Post Senior Political Editor, Michael Duffy, TIME Magazine Assistant Managing Editor and Katty Kay, BBC Washington Correspondent. They will bat these questions around:

Which leading GOP candidate has the political chops to conquer his flaw?

Is the cost of a college education still worth the price?

Meet the Press with David Gregory: Republican Presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich will be giving an exclusive interview.

The rountable guests Columnist for the Washington Post, EJ Dionne; columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan; senior political analyst for Time Magazine, Mark Halperin;  White House Correspondent for the New York Times, Helene Cooper;  and chief political writer for the New York Times Magazine, Matt Bai.

The NYT’s really scraped the bottom with right winger Bai

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: The human hybrid turtle, talks = on raising the debt ceiling, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell demanded spending cuts and changes to Medicare and Medicaid as part of the deal. Also, Rep, Paul Ryan (R_WI) will spread more of his toxic economic budget nonsense.

Former Clinton senior adviser and spokesman Joe Lockhart and former Bush strategy and policy adviser Michael Gerson will discuss the GOP presidential race.

Adm. Dennis Blair (Ret.) and Amb. John Negroponte will discuss Adm. Dennis Blair (Ret.) and Amb. John Negroponte.

Fareed Zakaris: GPS: Condoleezza Rice and Eric Schmidt join Fareed to argue the consequences of L’Affaire de bin Laden.

Just last month, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) resigned from the Senate after having decided that he would not run for re-election in 2012. Under investigation of the Senate ethics committee for charges stemming from an extramarital affair that led to bribery and FEC violations, Ensign made the announcement to resign May 3. The ethics committee released its report and has referred the case to the Justice Department

Tom Coburn Helped Cover Up John Ensign Affair: Senate Ethics Report

John Ensign Lied To FEC, Violated Campaign Finance Laws, Obstructed Investigation: Senate Ethics Panel

Panel Says Senator Was Warned on Illegality of Act

As Gaius Publius at AMERICAblog says,

Senate ethics complaints almost never come down to a resignation; it’s a ruler to the wrist and they move on.

It seems that John Ensign is the exception. If what Rachel Maddow says in the following report is true, this is a genuinely horrible human being, a sorry specimen – and not in a good way, since he’s apparently not sorry at all. Be prepared to be appalled.

A terrible human being. How did you fail thee? Let me count the ways. The horrid story starts at 5:05 in the clip. First it’s lurid, then turns cruel, then criminal.

Ensign couldn’t keep his pants on and figured he could buy his way out of the hole he had dug himself. Now he has ruined the lives of two families and stands to be indicted. Let’s see what transpires regarding Sen. Tom Coburn’s involvement and facilitation of this sordid C Street debacle.