The White House has been very tight-lipped about whether President Obama will even mention gun control in his speech. Daniel Hernandez, who will sit in the First Lady’s box, has already made his preference known.

CNN elaborates on something MSNBC reported last night. Not only did Quantico Brig Commander James Averhart improperly put Bradley Manning on suicide watch for two days last week, but the military is now investigating why he did so.

Do people still want to predict massive economic growth this year?

Last night anonymous military officials admitted to NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski that Quantico Brig Commander James Averhart placed Bradley Manning on suicide watch as a way to punish him for failure to obey an order.

The admission comes after Manning’s friend David House was detained by military police and prevented from visiting him at Quantico last weekend. Jake Tapper of ABC News asked Robert Gibbs about the incident yesterday during a White House press briefing, and if the administration is concerned about the way Manning is being treated. Gibbs referred him to “the authorities that are holding him [Manning].”

The Supreme Court of Illinois has granted Rahm Emanuel a stay of the appellate court’s ruling, so his name will still appear on the ballot for Chicago mayor.

The 2006 midterms were a disaster of biblical proportions for the Bush administration and the Republican Party. They lost the House, the Senate, and a raft of governors’ mansions and state legislatures. It was much worse than the “shellacking” the Democrats took last November. And how did George W. Bush respond to the American people’s complete rejection of the Republican agenda? He doubled down on it.

Given the circumstances, this is about the best that can be hoped for – distract Republicans from their mission to destroy government with little traps here and there, making it a bit easier to protect anything that’s not nailed down.

Military officials admitted today that Quantico Brig Commander James Averhart improperly classified Bradley Manning as a “suicide risk” in order to impose harsh conditions on him as punishment for failure to follow orders. Averhart’s order overruled the opinion of three brig psychiatrists who said Manning was not at risk.

The statement comes one day after David House, Manning’s only regular visitor, was detained for two hours by military police and prevented from seeing Manning until visiting hours were over.

Todd Tucker with Public Citizen will be liveblogging the House Ways and Means Committee full committee hearing on the pending free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, and job creation. You can find more details about the panelists scheduled to testify today at the Committee’s site at this link.

Carol Browner will leave the White House and her post as coordinator for energy and climate policy, a fitting end to the first two years of the Obama Administration and their failure to meet goals in this area.