Saturday opinion.
CT Post:
[Democrat Dannel] Malloy, some have argued, owes his election to the unions and therefore would do their bidding once in office. It hasn't turned out that way. His proposal to require the Legislature to approve new union contracts is the latest proof of that.
Christie and Walker have decided to pit residents in their respective states against each other -- union vs. non-union, public vs. private, us against them. They are taking advantage of serious issues to push agendas that have nothing to do with solving those problems.
Given the choice, we're lucky to have the governor we have.
According to the media, Scott Walker and Chris Christie are the only Governors in the country. Democrats like Malloy ought to be featured more. There's other ways of solving problems than the hyper-confrontational tea party way.
Charles Blow:
Republicans need to figure out where they stand on children’s welfare. They can’t be “pro-life” when the “child” is in the womb but indifferent when it’s in the world. Allow me to illustrate just how schizophrenic their position has become through the prism of premature babies.
Politico:
Threats of a government shutdown next week had all but disappeared by late Friday as Democrats reacted favorably to a Republican plan that would keep agencies operating past Mar. 4 while making a first down payment toward a larger budget deal.
Ezra Klein:
Ron Brownstein's column on the unusual role Republican governors are playing in Washington's conflicts is important to read. His conclusion is both chilling and obviously, undeniably, true:
Whatever the governors’ motivations (one man’s posturing, after all, is another man’s principle), their unreserved enlistment into Washington’s wars marks a milestone. It creates a second line of defense for conservatives to contest Obama even after he wins battles in Congress. It tears another hole in the fraying conviction that state capitals are less partisan than Washington. And it creates a precedent that is likely to encourage more guerrilla warfare between Democratic governors and a future Republican president.
American politics increasingly resembles a kind of total war in which each party mobilizes every conceivable asset at its disposal against the other. Most governors were once conscientious objectors in that struggle. No more.
And it's not just the governors. It's the courts, too.
HuffPo:
Democracy Now! producers Mike Burke and John Hamilton met with Harriet Blair Rowan, an activist and student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Rowan has spent the last nine days and nights at the capitol building and offered to give a tour through the encampment.
NY Times:
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said that anyone who advises a future president to send a large U.S. army to change a third-world regime “should have his head examined.”
Same goes for anyone who advised a previous president, and any previous president dumb enough to agree.
Timothy Egan:
But this year, “The King’s Speech,” concerning a monarch with a stammer, seems likely to win. And here’s the surprise: the period drama with Brits born on third base is a more compelling story of class mobility than the tale of America’s young elites inventing something that changed the world.
And, of course,
The Onion:
Marauding Gay Hordes Drag Thousands Of Helpless Citizens From Marriages After Obama Drops Defense Of Marriage Act
I knew this was gonna happen. I just knew it.