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- The GOP's latest effort at giving itself a face-lift is a new initiative, the National Council for a New America, headed up by such folks as John McCain, Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour and Bobby Jindal. Eric Cantor denies this is a "rebranding" effort although it does seem like the policy problems the initiative will be tackling conspicuously lack a focus on social issues. Presumably to tie their criticism of the president to this rebranding effort, House Republicans also released an 86 second video that suggests Obama's policies are making us less safe and ends with a shot of the smoldering Pentagon after the 9/11 attacks.
- In light of Barack Obama's roundabout admission last night that the Bush administration used torture and broke the law, and the evidence that Bush signed executive orders authorizing detainee abuse, you might think that support for a real investigation could be built. If it comes to that, though, Condoleeza Rice has her former boss' back, telling Stanford students that "the United States was told, we were told, nothing that violates our obligations under the Convention Against Torture. And so by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture."
- Time Magazine's list of the 100 most influential people is bound to provoke some head-scratching over some of the inclusions (an Ann Coulter-penned ode to Sarah Palin on the "Heroes and Icons" list?) -- but that's the point. Lists like this are utterly meaningless because "influence" becomes diluted when there's so much competition and since the finalists aren't even ranked, there's no way to determine whether, say, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, both in the "Leaders and Revolutionaries" category, are more or less influential than one another.
- Moe Tkacik at TPM has a good report on how the urge to put teachers' pensions into the high-flying bull markets of the go-go late-90s has resulted in those assets becoming toxic waste in the aftermath of the economic crash. Furthermore, this practice made possible the pay-to-play scandals slowly coming to light, most prominently in the case of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.
- Remainders: Michael Steele keeps embarrassing himself; Ambinder thinks the GOP needs to grow up (no argument here); Kilgore looks at the vote breakdown for the budget resolution and sees fairly strong party unity in the Democratic caucus; and Gingrich is down with a new Contract with America.
--Mori Dinauer
