While I’ve little time to blog today, this particular story seemed especially worthy of promotion. Amnesty International has sent the following mailing to its supporters (emphasis in original):

“The Egyptian military may have just hit a disturbing, new low: at least 18 women who were arrested during a peaceful protest in Tahrir Square on March 9 said they were forced to take ‘virginity tests’.”

This afternoon, President Obama will convene a conference call for members of Congress on the operation in Libya, a tacit acknowledgment that there is great concern about the strategy and the constitutional legitimacy of the mission. Press Secretary Jay Carney said at his briefing that the President “update them on the transition of command and control to NATO.”

I suspect our founders feared the Constitution might be shredded by military coup, civil war, foreign invasion or dictatorship, but I doubt they ever suspected it would be ruined by semantics.

When the mission in Libya began, the President was clear that it would be measured in days and not weeks. Well, NATO has told us how many days. Apparently, about 90.

For all the caterwauling from the right and, stupifyingly, from the Obama Administration and Blue Dog left as well, here is the real reason the United States has the sizable deficit issues it does (well, in addition to the fact we will not tax even rich individuals appropriately either) – our biggest corporations pay no tax.

Faced with large protests across the country, Syrian security forces opened fire on protesters today in several cities.

In the wake of Obama’s use of military force in Libya, let’s take a look back at what Nooners was saying about George W. Bush and Iraq in 2003.

William Cronon is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Earlier this week he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about the history of the labor movement in Wisconsin, and Scott Walker’s radical departure for that. He also recently started a blog, where he has tried to piece out who was behind the movement to eliminate public employee collective bargaining rights. This conflicted with the plans of very powerful people, and so they have attempted to silence him.

Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh is reportedly in negotiations to end his Presidency. No deal has yet been reached, but the protesters plan to put more pressure on Saleh today after Friday prayers with a large rally outside Sanaa University, called the “Day of Departure.” The capital has become a virtual tent city, with pro-democracy activists packing the streets and calling for the President’s removal.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, one of America’s most horrific industrial accidents, happened 100 years ago today, on March 11, 1911. Though New York City’s fire department arrived on the scene within two minutes of the call, the fire at this “modern” high rise at the corner of Washington Pl. and Greene St. still claimed the lives of 146 people, most of them young women and teenage girls. Some were burned, some died of smoke inhalation, some were crushed pushing for the exits, some fell from a faulty fire escape, and some jumped nine stories in an attempt to escape the flames.

It was a catastrophic, once-in-a-lifetime failure of what were considered more than ample emergency response systems. No one could have possibly anticipated. . . .