According to the Pentagon, in just this first week of our “kinetic military action” in Libya, the military has already spent $550 million. Instead of acting in a kinetic military manner toward Libya, we could have spent that money on many great things here at home.

At the beginning of his conference call today, deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes mentioned the London conference attended by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She met with coalition partners and members of the Libyan opposition, and he said the conference agreed on a dual track of responsibilities for the mission. But he also let slip, in reference to another question, that the conference discussed planning for a post-Gadhafi Libya. That may be prudent, but you basically have a set of officials far removed from the ground making decisions on the future of a country while running a military mission that supposedly does not include a mandate for regime change. In fact, the leaders at the London conference all agreed that Gadhafi had to go.

I just got off a call with Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security advisor for strategic communications, about the Libyan operation. Rhodes really tried to make the distinction between the allegedly limited military mission of the coalition and an operation with the clear objective of regime change. Rhodes said that the mission is “restricted to civilian protection,” and added that if you allow the military policy to creep into regime change, there is no UN authority for it.

Even if the banks get slapped with the “large” $30 billion penalty, that is only a net loss of 50% more than was saved by cutting corners. More likely, though, the settlement will cost the banks less than $30 billion. If I know the maximum punishment for robbing a bank was only being required to pay back what I stole plus at most another 50%, my life of crime would start tomorrow.

US military officials made it clear that the gains Libyan rebels made in the past few days could be reversible. They were right.

Caught Eric Cantor (R-VA) on NPR this morning, talking about his vision for America (2:20 in). “50% of beneficiaries under the Social Security program use those moneys as their sole source of income. So we’ve got to protect today’s seniors. But for the rest of us? Listen, we’re going to have to come to grips [...]

One entity that has thus far avoided all responsibility for the leak are the folks in charge of the Defense Department’s IT. As I have pointed out, DOD’s network security was embarrassingly bad–worse than your average mid-sized corporation. But to make their negligent security even worse, they had already suffered a damaging compromise of their systems when, in 2008, malware was introduced into their system via removable media, the same means by which Manning is alleged to have downloaded the WikiLeaks cables.

It’s been really incredible to watch the situation in Wisconsin over the past few days, because it’s taking on the cast of a banana republic. The Secretary of State has authority over publication of the laws. It’s a specific responsibility given to that constitutional officer. He was barred from doing so by a county judge. He has said publicly that it’s not in effect. Nobody else has the authority.

The Walker Administration doesn’t care.

In a presidency that has been marked by actions in direct opposition to his high-minded campaign, Barack Obama appears poised on the precipice of a move that could do more material damage to the US than his refusal to prosecute torturers, coddling of big business, healthcare sellout, escalation of existing wars and starting of a new one all combined. Rumors started on Twitter last night that, in a strange exchange of places, the potential nomination of Leon Panetta as Secretary of Defense could be coupled with nominating General David Petraeus to head CIA. This is so wrong, so stupid, so downright evil that I hardly know where to start.

It took a whistleblower to bring down the kill team, but senior Army leadership knew from battlefield reports and complaints from the local population about their exploits. It took a long time for them to act. So while there’s some solace in the fact that these soldiers are being held accountable for their crimes and that the process began well before the articles were released, it’s not like the punishment was swift. And the unit commander continues to operate freely, despite what was occurring in his ranks. Only the lower-level troops have been arrested. In fact, the article intimates that the squad leader, Calvin Gibbs, who was generally the ringleader for a lot of this conduct, learned the behavior while working in the security detail for a top colonel named Harry Tunnell, who pushed his troops to relentlessly attack the enemy.