Your usual editor for "The Digest", Magnifico, is "on assignment" tonight. Skymutt here filling in, ek hornbeck on tap tomorrow... Hey, don't forget to stop by the Overnight News Digest store and pick up some Digest gear! I suggest a travel mug. Just make sure you tell them that you want your mug to say 'Overnight News Digest!' Oh and sometimes they make you order in quantity, but no worries, just keep one and send us the extras...
News, after the break...
U.S.
- The DC Madam story gets more interesting Friday, when ABC's 20/20 (likely) names some additional names on her client list. The hammer has already fallen on State Department bigwig Randall Tobias, but according to ABC's Brian Ross, the list also includes "a Bush administration economist, the head of a conservative think tank, a prominent CEO, several lobbyists and a handful of military officials."
- Consumer spending rose only .3 percent in March, a weaker-than-expected rise, despite the fact that wages rose a relatively healthy .7 percent. The national savings rate was negative for the 24th consecutive month-- could weakening household balance sheets finally be hitting the consumer?
- Dick Cheney's investment guru says that the entire world economy is in a bubble. Jeremy Grantham warns that "The bursting of this bubble will be across all countries and all assets, with the probable exception of high-grade bonds. Since no similar global event has occurred before, the stresses to the system are likely to be unexpected. All of this is likely to depress confidence and lower economic activity."
- About the recent Supreme Court decision to uphold the controversial law that bans a particular type of abortion, University of Chicago Law professor Geoffrey Stone makes this observation: "All five justices in the majority in Gonzales are Roman Catholic... However distressing the inquiry, it is legitimate, indeed important, for us to ask whether, in deciding this case, the justices in the majority ignored the critical line between religious belief and public morality."
- George Tenet's book is out today. It's rated only 2 1/2 stars on Amazon, but seeing as how nobody could possibly have had time to read the thing yet, they may be rating the job performance and not the book...
- Today was the first day of rush hour traffic since the collapse of the freeway overpass in Oakland... The Metropolitan Traffic Commission reported traffic which was lighter than expected. Also, it was reported today that the truck driver who crashed the tanker truck which caused the collapse has a felony record including heroin possession and burglary.
- Gonzo is still AG, Wolfy is still at the WB. Dubya gave Wolfy an endorsement today.
Iraq:
- Several casualties over the weekend have driven the U.S. Military death toll in Iraq over 100 this month-- making April the deadliest month for our troops in Iraq so far in 2007.
In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.
The United States has previously admitted, sometimes under pressure from federal inspectors, that some of its reconstruction projects have been abandoned, delayed or poorly constructed. But this is the first time inspectors have found that projects officially declared a success — in some cases, as little as six months before the latest inspections — were no longer working properly.
The rest of the world:
- Five British nationals were convicted in Britain of a terrorism plot. The men were arrested in 2004 and were accused of a plot to build frertilizer bombs to blow up several targets, including a nightclub and a shopping mall.
- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's popularity is sliding in Iran amid high unemployment and inflation. An alliance is forming between progressives supporters of former president Mohammad Khatami with more conservative supporters of Hashemi Rafsanjani to attempt to take down Ahmadinejad by democratic means.
Other stuff:
What else happened today that we should know about?
Please treat this as an open thread.