Midday Open Thread

• Another 651,000 jobs were lost in February.
• Via TPM:

  The court that's hearing Don Siegelman's appeal of his conviction on bribery charges has reversed two of the counts of which the former Alabama governor was found guilty -- but upheld several others.  [...]

  The court also ordered a new sentencing hearing, in light of the reversal of the two counts. It's unclear as yet how those reversals will affect Siegelman's sentencing.

• Rumor has it that there's a plea deal in the works for Bernie Madoff, the man who "carried out one of the biggest financial frauds in history." Lucky for Madoff that he didn't rob a gas station.
• The deal for Karl Rove's unsworn, behind-closed-doors chat with Congress is looking more and more like a joke. Now his attorney says it will be "several weeks" before turdblossom will be ready to talk.
• Two "top contenders for senior posts at the U.S. Treasury have withdrawn."
• Oops:

  U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a red "reset button" to symbolise improved ties, but the gift drew smiles as the word "reset" was mistranslated into the Russian for "overcharge".  [...]

  Clinton joked to Lavrov: "We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?"

  "You got it wrong," said Lavrov, smiling as the two pushed the reset button together before dinner at a Geneva hotel.

• Via Balloon Juice, the new welfare queens.
• Brutal article from the New York Times on Sen. Jim Bunning.
• Sanjay Gupta withdrew his name for consideration to be the next U.S. surgeon general.
• The Hon. James Robertson of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, dismissing Hollister v. Soetoro (PDF), another one of the "birther" cases:

  This case, if it were allowed to proceed, would deserve mention in one of those books that seek to prove that the law is foolish or that America has too many lawyers with not enough to do. Even in its relatively short life the case has excited the blogosphere and the conspiracy theorists. The right thing to do is to bring it to an early end.

  The plaintiff says that he is a retired Air Force colonel who continues to owe fealty to his Commander-in-Chief (because he might possibly be recalled to duty) and who is tortured by uncertainty as to whether he would have to obey orders from Barack Obama because it has not been proven -- to the colonel’s satisfaction -- that Mr. Obama is a native-born American citizen, qualified under the Constitution to be President. The issue of the President’s citizenship was raised, vetted, blogged, texted, twittered, and otherwise massaged by America’s vigilant citizenry during Mr. Obama’s two-year-campaign for the presidency, but this plaintiff wants it resolved by a court....

  - AdamB