The President sat down with Bill O’Reilly before the Super Bowl last night, and this exchange was absolutely appalling.

Jane Harman will announce tomorrow that she will leave Congress to head up the Woodrow Wilson Center, a think tank in Washington formerly chaired by former Congressman Lee Hamilton. In a note to supporters, Harman says that she would “remain in Congress for some weeks,” but would have to resign her seat before long, triggering a special election.

When we last looked in on the ongoing saga of Raymond Davis in Pakistan, we saw that Congressman Darrell Issa was there, meeting with the President and the Prime Minister, arguing for release of Davis after he shot dead two Pakistanis on the streets of Lahore, with a third Pakistani killed by a US consular vehicle rushing to the scene in the aftermath of the shootings. Now, despite earlier US claims that Davis’ victims were thieves trying to hold him up at gunpoint, a report has surfaced in the Pakistani press that Davis’ victims were actually intelligence operatives for Pakistan’s government and that they had found Davis’ actions to be “detrimental to our national security.” In further developments, a second Congressional delegation met with Prime Minister Gilani, threatening US military funding to Pakistan if Davis is not released quickly and the widow of one of the victims has committed suicide because she believed that Davis would be released without being tried in Pakistan.

By and large, the Obama Administration response to this admittedly difficult challenge has been not-horrible. But both Frank Wisner’s selection as envoy (which would have been horrible even without the Patton Boggs connection, given his ties to his daddy’s coup-happy CIA, Enron, and AIG) and Hillary’s outspoken support for Omar Suleiman were unforced errors.

America On-Line finally figured out how to pulp all those CDs and turn them into bills, because they just up and purchased the Huffington Post for $315 million.

While this video of the shooting of an unarmed man in the streets of Alexandria circulated online, the mainstream western headlines were full of rather fishy talk about the meeting between Vice President Omar Suleiman and “the opposition.” And in the U.S., both President Obama in his interview with Bill O’Reilly, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been making comments as conflicted as before.

• The latest on the Egypt uprising.
• Good riddance.
• More big gubmint intrusion in our lives [/wingnut.]
• Krugman on the global food crisis.
• You’ve got HuffPo.

A well-timed salute to treating labor badly.

Kenny Wayne Shepherd – Blue on Black

And, finally, we showed that people can demand that their government help find the solution. Given modern, technologically advanced 21st century medicine, it is, in fact, the least we should expect from our government.

A government that is the solution, not the problem — like the one you promised and delivered for so many of my dead friends.