Overall, I’d rank Obama’s treatment of the auto bailout with an A-.

Olympia Snowe in the NYT:

Regrettably, we failed to learn the lessons of Jim Jeffords’s defection in 2001. To the contrary, we overreached in interpreting the results of the presidential election of 2004 as a mandate for the party. This resulted in the disastrous elections of 2006 and 2008, which combined for a total loss of 51 Republicans in the House and 13 in the Senate — with a corresponding shift of the Congressional majority and the White House to the Democrats.

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said Tuesday he will support the nomination of an Indiana University law professor to head the Obama administration’s internal law office.

He is the first Republican to publicly declare his backing for Dawn Johnsen, whose selection to head the Office of Legal Counsel has grown into a fight about abortion rights and counterterrorism practices.

• The country’s turning on Obama: TEAPARTY!
• First US death from swine flu?
• Meet the new HHS.
• Impeach now.
• Support Marcy!
• Looks like Biden got his man.
• Nate breaks down the Specter switch.
• You just can’t make this shit up.

The Party of Lincoln (Rockwell)

Stephen Bruton – Nothing But The Truth.   

On my mind tonight  is the Organic Blogging fundraiser to help Marcy be able to blog full time.  You can donate here  and you can set a reoccurring donation here.

What’s on your mind tonight?

The fringenuts are freaking out over swine flu, calling for border crackdowns and muttering strange conspiracy theories. But recall if you will from simpler times in the age of disco, right before punk rock when swine flu first raised its grotty snout into America’s sightlines. . . .

Okay, so, let me get this straight: Arlen Specter switches from Republican to Democrat in a blatant act of voter-shopping (“I’m not prepared to have my 29-year record in the United States Senate decided by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate”) to prevent his ass from being kicked by Club For Growth wingnut Pat Toomey.

Something else worth noting from the PFAW-sponsored press call in support of Dawn Johnsen yesterday.  Doug Kmiec pointedly called out something that was missing from the OLC torture memo context.

Dr. Steven Miles, the author of Oath Betrayed – America’s Torture Doctors, and a prominent bioethicist at the University of Minnesota, has released the text of an open letter he has written to Dr. Stephen Behnke, Ethics Director of the American Psychological Association (APA), and Dr. Gerald Koocher, 2006 APA President.

Miles asks Behnke and Koocher “to publically urg[e] the APA to conduct a transparent review of how” it