“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”

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Are there no standards for punditry?

Last Sunday, ABC’S “This Week” turned to none other than Donald Rumsfeld, the former Bush administration defense secretary, to get his informed judgment of the mission in Libya. Last month, the journal International Finance featured former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan commenting on what is “hampering” the economic recovery.

Fox News trumped even that, trotting out retired Marine Col. Oliver North, the former Reagan security staffer who orchestrated the secret war in Nicaragua, to indict President Obama for – you can’t make this stuff up – failing to get a congressional resolution in support of the mission in Libya.

Next we’ll see a cable talk show inviting the former head of BP to tell us what it takes to do offshore drilling safely.

Susan Feiner: Assault on Public Unions an Affront to Women’s Historic Gains

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s slash-and-burn approach to public sector unions — imitated by over a dozen Republican governors across the nation — is the political equivalent of slamming women’s labor history into reverse. Right in the middle of Women’s History Month.

While women represented 57 percent of the public-sector work force at the end of the recession, women lost the vast majority–79 percent–of the 327,000 jobs cut in this sector between July 2009 and February 2011, according to a January report by the Washington, D.C.-based National Women’s Law Center.

Of course these job losses–and those still to come–have a bad ripple effect, leading to even more unemployment, spreading the pain far beyond the initially affected workers.

Ruth Marcus: Obama fills in some important blanks on Libya

In his speech Monday night to a public thoroughly, and understandably, befuddled about U.S. policy in Libya, President Obama began to fill in some important blanks. The White House would dispute this assessment, but Obama’s remarks came unfortunately late. Rallying the public behind “kinetic military action,” my new favorite phrase, requires explanations sooner rather than later. This is especially true when it is a kinetic action of choice, not necessity; in the nervous aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan; and in the relentless context of a 24-7 news cycle.

And especially when the run-up to action has been so herky-jerky, with clashing messages about the wisdom and feasibility of a no-fly zone and a confusing bifurcation of means and ends. It is U.S. policy that Moammar Gaddafi should – indeed, must – go, but that is not the stated aim of the military action.

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.

March 30 is the 89th day of the year (90th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 276 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward signs a treaty with Russia for the purchase of Alaska for $7 million. Despite the bargain price of roughly two cents an acre, the Alaskan purchase was ridiculed in Congress and in the press as “Seward’s folly,” “Seward’s icebox,” and President Andrew Johnson’s “polar bear garden.”

Alaska Purchase

Russia was in a difficult financial position and feared losing Russian America without compensation in some future conflict, especially to the British, whom they had fought in the Crimean War (1853-1856). While Alaska attracted little interest at the time, the population of nearby British Columbia started to increase rapidly a few years after hostilities ended, with a large gold rush there prompting the creation of a crown colony on the mainland. The Russians therefore started to believe that in any future conflict with Britain, their hard-to-defend region might become a prime target, and would be easily captured. Therefore the Tsar decided to sell the territory. Perhaps in hopes of starting a bidding war, both the British and the Americans were approached, however the British expressed little interest in buying Alaska. The Russians in 1859 offered to sell the territory to the United States, hoping that its presence in the region would offset the plans of Russia’s greatest regional rival, Great Britain. However, no deal was brokered due to the American Civil War.

Following the Union victory in the Civil War, the Tsar then instructed the Russian minister to the United States, Eduard de Stoeckl, to re-enter into negotiations with Seward in the beginning of March 1867. The negotiations concluded after an all-night session with the signing of the treaty at 4 a.m. on March 30, 1867, with the purchase price set at $7.2 million, or about 2 cents per acre ($4.74/km2).

American public opinion was generally positive, as most editors argued that the U.S. would probably derive great economic benefits from the purchase; friendship of Russia was important; and it would facilitate the acquisition of British Columbia.

Historian Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer summarized the minority opinion of some newspaper editors who opposed the purchase:

   “Already, so it was said, we were burdened with territory we had no population to fill. The Indians within the present boundaries of the republic strained our power to govern aboriginal peoples. Could it be that we would now, with open eyes, seek to add to our difficulties by increasing the number of such peoples under our national care? The purchase price was small; the annual charges for administration, civil and military, would be yet greater, and continuing. The territory included in the proposed cession was not contiguous to the national domain. It lay away at an inconvenient and a dangerous distance. The treaty had been secretly prepared, and signed and foisted upon the country at one o’clock in the morning. It was a dark deed done in the night…. The New York World said that it was a “sucked orange.” It contained nothing of value but furbearing animals, and these had been hunted until they were nearly extinct. Except for the Aleutian Islands and a narrow strip of land extending along the southern coast the country would be not worth taking as a gift…. Unless gold were found in the country much time would elapse before it would be blessed with Hoe printing presses, Methodist chapels and a metropolitan police. It was “a frozen wilderness.

While criticized by some at the time, the financial value of the Alaska Purchase turned out to be many times greater than what the United States had paid for it. The land turned out to be rich in resources (including gold, copper, and oil).

Senate debate

When it became clear that the Senate would not debate the treaty before its adjournment on March 30, Seward persuaded President Andrew Johnson to call the Senate back into special session the next day. Many Republicans scoffed at “Seward’s folly,” although their criticism appears to have been based less on the merits of the purchase than on their hostility to President Johnson and to Seward as Johnson’s political ally. Seward mounted a vigorous campaign, however, and with support from Charles Sumner, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, won approval of the treaty on April 9 by a vote of 37-2.

For more than a year, as congressional relations with President Johnson worsened, the House refused to appropriate the necessary funds. But in June 1868, after Johnson’s impeachment trial was over, Stoeckl and Seward revived the campaign for the Alaska purchase. The House finally approved the appropriation in July 1868, by a vote of 113-48.

You can get away with defrauding people of possibly trillions of dollars but don’t do it if you’re a borrower or undocumented immigrant working on the banker’s estate.

The Department of Justice: Indicting Immigrants, Ignoring Wall Street Crooks

by Richard (RJ) Escow

If you’re a banker who bought your estate with the millions you made from mortgage fraud, relax. The Justice Department isn’t looking for you. But if you’re an illegal immigrant who’s working on that banker’s estate, look out. The Department of Justice is ignoring your boss and devoting most of its resources to catching you.

And the Justice Department’s “mortgage fraud” unit doesn’t prosecute bankers. It protects them.

Joe Nocera of the New York Times contrasts the legal treatment that was given to one high-flying borrower with that received by Angelo Mozilo, CEO of the fraudulent lender Countrywide. But if stories like this one are bad, the numbers are even worse.  

If you also take a qualitative look at some of the federal government’s other well-publicized mortgage fraud efforts, like its “Stop Fraud” website, the picture becomes pretty stunning — if not downright infuriating.

Mortgage Brokers Go Free While Mortgage Customer Goes to Jail

by David Dayen

Joe Nocera’s story over the weekend about a man thrown in jail for signing his name on a liar loan is a textbook example of the two-tiered system of justice in this country. On the one hand you have the banks, who systematically committed fraud on millions of loans, and for their trouble received hundreds of billions in bailout money and access to cheap money. On the other hand you have a customer, who gets taken to jail for his one loan transgression. Never mind that for many millions of customers, they didn’t even know they were lying on their loans; shady mortgage brokers falsified their records, forged their signatures and altered the terms and conditions repeatedly during the run-up of the housing bubble. And that’s possibly true of Charlie Engle as well, as Nocera illustrates.

As for the loans themselves, on one of them Mr. Engle claimed an income of $15,000 a month. As it turns out, his total income in 2005, according to his accountant, was $180,000, which amounts to … hmmm …$15,000 a month, though of course Mr. Engle didn’t have the kind of job that generated monthly income. (In addition to real estate speculation, Mr. Engle gave motivational speeches and earned around $50,000 a year as a producer on the hit show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”)

   The monthly income listed on the second loan was $32,500, an obviously absurd amount, especially since the loan itself was for only $300,000. It was a refinance of a property Mr. Engle already owned, allowing him to pull out $80,000 of the $215,000 in equity he had in the property.

   Mr. Engle claims that he never saw that $32,500 claim and never signed the papers. Indeed, a handwriting analysis conducted by the government raised the distinct possibility that Mr. Engle’s signature and his initials in several places in the mortgage documents had been forged. As it happens, Mr. Engle’s broker for that loan, John J. Hellman, recently pleaded guilty to mortgage fraud for playing fast and loose with a number of mortgage applications. Mr. Hellman testified in court that Mr. Engle had signed the mortgage application. Early this week, Mr. Hellman received a reduced sentence of 10 months, less than half of Mr. Engle’s sentence, in no small part because of his willingness to testify against Mr. Engle.

The specifics of the case are quite disturbing – the IRS man with an axe to grind, the confused jury – but the general impression is perhaps worse. A loan is a contract between two people. When that loan is fraudulent, to the extent that the fraud is willingly entered into by both parties, they should in any reasonable world share the blame. But not only did Engle suffer disproportionately by losing all his equity when the bubble popped, he lost his personal freedom in a crime that his mortgage lender was all too happy to facilitate and may have even perpetrated.

This is the Obama administration Justice Department at work. Meanwhile the banksters are now trying to keep this all out of court:

Are Banks Scheming to Gut the Role of the Courts in Foreclosures?

by Yves Smith

I may be overreacting but given the sorry behavior of banks throughout the crisis and its aftermath, better to be vigilant than sorry.

The Wall Street Journal provided a very sketchy summary of the counterproposal that the banks will put on the table in the foreclosure fraud settlements this week:

   The 15-page bank proposal, dubbed the Draft Alternative Uniform Servicing Standards, includes time lines for processing modifications, a third-party review of foreclosures and a single point of contact for financially troubled borrowers. It also outlines a so-called “borrower portal” that would allow customers to check the status of their loan modifications online.

   But the document doesn’t include any discussion of principal reductions. Nor does it include a potential amount banks could pay for borrower relief or penalties.

This seems innocuous, right?

Think twice. It depends on what they mean by “third party review of foreclosures”. I strongly suspect that the intent is to pull as many contested foreclosures as possible out of the court process, particularly those that involve chain of title issues, since enough adverse rulings have the potential to blow up the entire mortgage industrial complex.

Yup, getting away with fraud unless you’ve already lost your shirt or you have no papers and work for a banker. You rock, Mr. Rule of Law.

Recently, US State Department spokesperson, P.J. Crowley was forced to tender his resignation becuase he had the audacity to call the inhumane treatment of PFC. Bradley Manning “ridiculous, counterproductive, and stupid”. He is now defending that statement and explaining how Manning’s treatment undermines our own strategic narrative, as his piece in the Guardian explains:

The US should uphold the highest standards towards its citizens, including the WikiLeaks accused. I stand by what I said

   But I understood why the question was asked. Private Manning’s family, joined by a number of human rights organisations, has  questioned the extremely restrictive conditions he has experienced at the brig at Marine Corps base Quantico, Virginia. I focused on the fact that he was forced to sleep naked, which led to a circumstance where he stood naked for morning call.

   Based on 30 years of government experience, if you have to explain why a guy is standing naked in the middle of a jail cell, you have a policy in need of urgent review. The Pentagon was quick to point out that no women were present when he did so, which is completely beside the point.

   Our strategic narrative connects our policies to our interests, values and aspirations. While what we do, day in and day out, is broadly consistent with the universal principles we espouse, individual actions can become disconnected. Every once in a while, even a top-notch symphony strikes a discordant note. So it is in this instance.

   The Pentagon has said that it is playing the Manning case by the book. The book tells us what actions we can take, but not always what we should do. Actions can be legal and still not smart. With the Manning case unfolding in a fishbowl-like environment, going strictly by the book is not good enough. Private Manning’s overly restrictive and even petty treatment undermines what is otherwise a strong legal and ethical position.

   When the United States leads by example, we are not trying to win a popularity contest. Rather, we are pursuing our long-term strategic interest. The United States cannot expect others to meet international standards if we are seen as falling short. Differences become strategic when magnified through the lens of today’s relentless 24/7 global media environment.

   So, when I was asked about the “elephant in the room,” I said the treatment of Private Manning, while well-intentioned, was “ridiculous” and “counterproductive” and, yes, “stupid”.

   I stand by what I said. The United States should set the global standard for treatment of its citizens – and then exceed it. It is what the world expects of us. It is what we should expect of ourselves.

Today, Crowley appeared on the Dylan Ratigan Shoiw and reiterated what he said in his article but hemmed and hawed when Ratigan asked him about a similar leak about classified information to the press.

Mr. Crowley, if we are going to vigorously prosecute Bradley Manning for releasing documents that even the Vice President has said have done no harm. why aren’t you supporting the ferreting out of this other “leaker”? What is the difference if information is given to the press or Wikileaks? The US can hardly be an arbiter of human rights and the rule of law when it can’t apply either to even its own citizens.

I’ll be sitting in for ek hornbeck who is Live Blogging the Men’s and Women’s NCAA Championship Games for the next few days. Come live blog the Women’s Regional Finals Day 2 with us.

“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”

Dean Baker: The Deficit Hawks Target Nurses and Firefighters

Many people might think that the country’s problems stem from the fact that too much money has been going to the very rich. Over the last three decades, the richest one percent of the population has increased its share of national income by almost 10 percentage points (Excel spreadsheet). This comes to $1.5 trillion a year, or as the deficit hawks are fond of saying, $90 trillion over the next 75 years.

To put this in context, the size of this upward redistribution to the richest one percent over the last three decades is roughly large enough to double the income of all the households in the bottom half of the income distribution. The upward redistribution amounts to an average of more than 1.2 million dollars a year for each of the families in the richest one percent of the population.

Eugene Robinson: Newt Gingrich on Libya policy: Firing in every direction

If you don’t like Newt Gingrich’s carefully considered and passionately argued position on the U.S. intervention in Libya, just wait. Recent history suggests that within days he’ll be saying the opposite of whatever he’s saying now.

My best guess is that for the moment, at least, Gingrich kind of supports President Obama’s decision to use military force against Libyan despot Moammar Gaddafi, or at least that he hopes it succeeds. But it’s hard to be certain. On Libya, the former House speaker has shown the ability to be both pro and con with equal moral certainty and intellectual arrogance.

Dana Milbank: The Obama doctrine: A gray area the size of Libya

The National Defense University at Fort McNair was a favorite backdrop of President George W. Bush as he laid out his Bush doctrine of preemptive war.

Five times during his presidency, Bush visited the military installation in Southwest D.C., serving up such memorable soundbites as “we’re at war with cold-blooded killers who despise freedom,” and “we will keep the terrorists on the run until they have nowhere left to hide,” and “our immediate strategy is to eliminate terrorist threats abroad so we do not have to face them here at home.”

So it was noteworthy that Obama chose the same location for his speech to the nation justifying the U.S. military action in Libya. After ten days of confusion about America’s role in Libya – and in the world – Obama finally was prepared to articulate his “doctrine.”

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.

March 29 is the 88th day of the year (89th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 277 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1951, the Rosenbergs are convicted of espionage.

In one of the most sensational trials in American history, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of espionage for their role in passing atomic secrets to the Soviets during and after World War II. The husband and wife were later sentenced to death and were executed in 1953.

The conviction of the Rosenbergs was the climax of a fast-paced series of events that were set in motion with the arrest of British physicist Klaus Fuchs in Great Britain in February 1950. British authorities, with assistance from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, gathered evidence that Fuchs, who worked on developing the atomic bomb both in England and the United States during World War II, had passed top-secret information to the Soviet Union. Fuchs almost immediately confessed his role and began a series of accusations.

Fuchs confessed that American Harry Gold had served as a courier for the Soviet agents to whom Fuchs passed along his information. American authorities captured Gold, who thereupon pointed the finger at David Greenglass, a young man who worked at the laboratory where the atomic bomb had been developed. Gold claimed Greenglass was even more heavily involved in spying than Fuchs. Upon his arrest, Greenglass readily confessed and then accused his sister and brother-in-law, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, of being the spies who controlled the entire operation. Both Ethel and Julius had strong leftist leanings and had been heavily involved in labor and political issues in the United States during the late-1930s and 1940s. Julius was arrested in July and Ethel in August 1950.

By present-day standards, the trial was remarkably fast. It began on March 6, and the jury had convicted both of conspiracy to commit espionage by March 29. The Rosenbergs were not helped by a defense that many at the time, and since, have labeled incompetent. More harmful, however, was the testimony of Greenglass and Gold. Greenglass declared that Julius Rosenberg had set up a meeting during which Greenglass passed the plans for the atomic bomb to Gold. Gold supported Greenglass’s accusation and admitted that he then passed the plans along to a Soviet agent. This testimony sealed Julius’s fate, and although there was little evidence directly tying Ethel to the crime, prosecutors claimed that she was the brain behind the whole scheme. The jury found both guilty. A few days later, the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death. They were executed on June 19, 1953 in Sing Sing Prison in New York. Both maintained their innocence to the end.

Since the execution, decoded Soviet cables, codenamed VENONA, have supported courtroom testimony that Julius acted as a courier and recruiter for the Soviets, but doubts remain about the level of Ethel’s involvement. The decision to execute the Rosenbergs was, and still is, controversial. The New York Times, in an editorial on the 50th anniversary of the execution (June 19, 2003) wrote, “The Rosenbergs case still haunts American history, reminding us of the injustice that can be done when a nation gets caught up in hysteria.” This hysteria had both an immediate and a lasting effect; many innocent scientists, including some who were virulently anti-communist, were investigated simply for having the last name “Rosenberg.” The other atomic spies who were caught by the FBI offered confessions and were not executed. Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, who supplied documents to Julius from Los Alamos, served 10 years of his 15 year sentence. Harry Gold, who identified Greenglass, served 15 years in Federal prison as the courier for Greenglass and the British scientist, Klaus Fuchs. Morton Sobell, who was tried with the Rosenbergs, served 17 years and 9 months. In 2008, Sobell admitted he was a spy and confirmed Julius Rosenberg was “in a conspiracy that delivered to the Soviets classified military and industrial information and what the American government described as the secret to the atomic bomb.”

Shortly after taking office, the Barack Obama’s Attorney General announced new Department of Justice guidelines for medical marijuana in states that had laws permitting its dispensing.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said Wednesday that the Justice Department has no plans to prosecute pot dispensaries that are operating legally under state laws in California and a dozen other states — a development that medical marijuana advocates and civil libertarians hailed as a sweeping change in federal drug policy

Well, apparently the word didn’t get out to the field and in the last two weeks there have been 28 raids on medical marijuana clinics in Montana where 26 raids took place:

GREAT FALLS, Mont. – Federal agencies conducted 26 raids on medical marijuana facilities in 13 Montana cities this week, as agents seized thousands of marijuana plants and froze about $4 million in bank funds.

The raids stunned medical marijuana advocates, many of whom believed the Obama administration’s policy was to leave states with medical marijuana laws alone.

That belief stemmed from Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement in October 2009 that the pursuit of “individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance” with existing state medical marijuana laws would be the lowest priority of U.S. law enforcement.

and California:

Federal drug enforcement agents Tuesday raided two West Hollywood medical marijuana stores in the first such action in the city since the Obama administration decided two years ago to take a hands-off approach to dispensaries that abide by state laws.

The dispensaries — Alternative Herbal Health Services and Zen Healing on Santa Monica Boulevard — are among four that the city has authorized to operate. West Hollywood was one of the first California cities to regulate medical marijuana sales and is often cited as a model.

In the tradition of the previous administration, the DOJ and the IRS began the raids after new memo (pdf) was issued that is up front about the new policy. The memo issued on February 1st by US Attorney Melinda Haag (who, ironically, represents Northern California) directly contradicts Holder’s edict. She declares that ANYONE engaging in the buying or selling of marijuana, regardless of their protection under state laws, will be punished by the federal government.

As the Department has stated on many occasions, Congress has determined that marijuana is a controlled substance. Congress placed marijuana in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and, as such, growing, distributing, and possessing marijuana in any capacity, other than as part of a federally authorized research program, is a violation of federal law regardless of state laws permitting such activities.

The prosecution of individuals and organizations involved in the trade of any illegal drugs and the disruption of drug trafficking organizations is a core priority of the Department. This core priority includes prosecution of business enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana. Accordingly, while the Department does not focus its limited resources on seriously ill individuals who use marijuana as part of a medically recommended treatment regimen in compliance with state law as stated in the October 2009 Ogden Memorandum, we will enforce the CSA vigorously against individuals and organizations that participate in unlawful

manufacturing and distribution activity involving marijuana, even if such activities are permitted under state law. The Department’s investigative and prosecutorial resources will continue to be directed toward these objectives.

Schedule I drugs are determined to have “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” and carry the harshest penalties resulting in a prison population in which 1 in 8 prisoners in the U.S. is locked up for a marijuana-related offense. However, recently a federal agency has determined that marijuana does have a medicinal purpose. The National Cancer Institute (NCI), a division of the National Institute of Health, which is itself one of the 11 component agencies that make up the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, added to its treatment database a summary of marijuana’s medicinal benefits, including an acknowledgment that oncologists may recommend it to patients for medicinal use:

The potential benefits of medicinal Cannabis for people living with cancer include antiemetic effects, appetite stimulation, pain relief, and improved sleep. In the practice of integrative oncology, the health care provider may recommend medicinal Cannabis not only for symptom management but also for its possible direct antitumor effect.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that medical use of marijuana cannot be considered in any federal court deliberating on a marijuana possession or distribution case. While a solution to this would be to reschedule marijuana and put it under the regulation of the FDA but the possibility of this Congress acting on this anytime soon is nil to zero.

That leads to the question of the administrations policies which are conflicting to say the least and appear to have some political motivation to molify the criticism of the hard right wing that is now dominating the conversation. It begs to question whether Holder is being dishonest and hypocritical? Or does he simply lack strong leadership among US Attorneys General? Either way, this isn’t the way this administration is winning any support.

The Just Say Now campaign at FDL has a petition telling Holder to enforce his memo and stop raiding marijuana clinics.

I’ll be sitting in for ek hornbeck who is Live Blogging the Men’s and Women’s NCAA Championship Games for the next few days. Come live blog the Women’s Regional Finals with us.

“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”

Pual Krugman: American Thought Police

Recently William Cronon, a historian who teaches at the University of Wisconsin, decided to weigh in on his state’s political turmoil. He started a blog, “Scholar as Citizen,” devoting his first post to the role of the shadowy American Legislative Exchange Council in pushing hard-line conservative legislation at the state level. Then he published an opinion piece in The Times, suggesting that Wisconsin’s Republican governor has turned his back on the state’s long tradition of “neighborliness, decency and mutual respect.”

So what was the G.O.P.’s response? A demand for copies of all e-mails sent to or from Mr. Cronon’s university mail account containing any of a wide range of terms, including the word “Republican” and the names of a number of Republican politicians.

E. J. Dionne, Jr.: The Midwest’s new class politics

The battle for the Midwest is transforming American politics. Issues of class inequality and union influence, long dormant, have come back to life. And a part of the country that was integral to the Republican surge of 2010 is shifting away from the GOP just a few months later.

Republican governors, particularly in Wisconsin and Ohio, denied themselves political honeymoons by launching frontal assaults on public employee unions and proposing budgets that include deep cuts in popular programs.

Doyle McManus: Obama’s nuanced call to arms in Libya

The Obama administration says the goals of its bombing campaign in Libya are crystal clear, but it has tied itself in knots trying to explain them.

This isn’t a war, White House spokesman Jay Carney said last week, “it’s a time-limited, scope-limited military action.”

“What we are doing is enforcing a [United Nations] resolution that has a very clear set of goals, which is protecting the Libyan people, averting a humanitarian crisis and setting up a no-fly zone,” said national security aide Ben Rhodes. “Obviously that involves kinetic military action, particularly on the front end. But … we are not getting into an open-ended war, a land invasion in Libya.”

Clear enough for you?