Visual source: Newseum
NY Times:
The killing of Osama bin Laden has set off a reassessment of the war in Afghanistan and the broader effort to combat terrorism, with Congress, the military and the Obama administration weighing the goals, strategies, costs and underlying authority for a conflict that is now almost a decade old.
Rick Ungar/Forbes:
We’ve already seen this movie in America – and it isn’t pretty. And while I suppose one can always craft an argument, if necessary, in opposition to teacher’s rights, the money paid to state workers who contribute their careers for the benefit of the public and the other examples of Scott Walker’s program to recreate the country in the frightening political image of Walker and his friends, I struggle to imagine any argument that would support disenfranchising voters based only on their proclivity for voting for candidates representing the other party.
Lee Hockstader:
In reiterating his vision for immigration reform today — a vision essentially identical to his predecessor’s — President Obama spoke truth to power, the power in this case being congressional Republicans.
The president’s speech in El Paso isn’t likely to make any difference to Republicans, who can and will continue to block any serious overhaul of immigration policy, which is to say anything that solves the problem of 11 million undocumented immigrants. But it may make plenty of difference to Hispanics, the nation’s biggest and fastest-growing minority, in reminding them who’s got their backs.
For the president, and for Democrats generally, that’s a massively helpful and timely reminder.
Dana Milbank:
Poor Paul Ryan and John Boehner.
Ryan, chairman of the House budget committee, proposed budget cuts so severe his plan has been described as a suicide note. Boehner, the House speaker, rushed the budget to passage before Republicans grasped the potential fallout from their vote to replace Medicare.
Froma Harrop:
Nice try, Republicans, running a political protection racket to push your Medicare scheme. Scrubbed of the sweet talk about saving Medicare, your offer boiled down to this: You older folks support us, and we won't touch a hair on your government health-insurance plan. Only those 55 and under get whacked.
Somehow this appeal to greedy geezer-ism didn't go over so well. Perhaps it was too blatant. Perhaps older people are not greedy — they worry about the coming generations. And perhaps these voters looked a couple of moves ahead on the chessboard and figured that a radical shrinkage in health care security for today's younger workers would imperil the cushy benefits they enjoy. After all, with each passing year, there will be more voters born after the 1957 cutoff and fewer born before.
Anyway, the reception to the plan was less than friendly. The angry ones who beat up on Democrats during last year's town hall meetings seemed to do a U-turn and waved their fists at Republicans. In response, GOP leaders wisely backed away from their deficit plan, which in essence, would balance budgets by going after Medicare with an ax.
It wouldn't even balance the budget. It would just wield the ax.
Hendrik Hertzberg, in honor of a (possible but delayed) Mitch Daniels run:
A month from now, Mitch Daniels, the Governor of Indiana, will probably be a declared candidate for President. His candidacy, if it comes off, will test the (rather dubious) hypothesis that Republicans might be willing to forgo some of the visceral pleasures of an eighteen-month-long Hate Week in exchange for nominating someone capable of appealing to moderates and other infidels.
EJ Dionne:
For good reason, most of the media attention today went to House Speaker John Boehner’s speech on the deficit. But the more important event may have been his journey Monday to upstate New York to bolster Jane Corwin, his party’s candidate in the May 24 special election in New York’s 26th Congressional District.
More on NY-26
here and
here.
Harold Meyerson:
The implications for the U.S. economy are potentially major. With labor costs soaring in China and the yuan slowly rising, while in the United States productivity soars and the dollar slowly declines, the economic advantages that American companies reap by offshoring production begin to dwindle. A Boston Consulting Group study released this month on the return of U.S. manufacturing concludes that “re-investment in the U.S. will accelerate” as a result of these trends.
Great news, no? Well, hold the applause for now.