Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced at a Pentagon briefing that President Obama has authorized the use of armed Predator drones over Libya. The unmanned planes have been used extensively in the Afghanistan and Pakistan missions, among other places. In fact, an amendment to the latest FAA Authorization bill, if passed by Congress, would allow for the use of drones in US airspace. So, why not Libya?

The disappearances of human rights activists, lawyers, doctors and sports figures continues in Bahrain. Three members of Congress in the US have spoken out, but still Obama and Clinton are silent.

The report described the opening of prisons, clearly a high-level decision, as intentional, providing evidence in the form of video surveillance cameras showing security forces allowing prisoners to flee. It also documented security forces firing at protesters and running them over with vehicles.

Apparently, at this afternoon’s fundraiser in San Francisco, several protesters sang a song to Obama protesting Bradley Manning’s treatment.

Not that we needed more empirical evidence that proves Republican voters are a bunch of wackadoos, but…

Two separate notes from two separate people seem to be emphasizing that the POI decision had nothing to do with Manning’s psychological health.

What we know is this is all nonsense. Republicans promised an increase in the debt limit in a meeting with the President. Everything else makes for a nice play, but like in ancient Greece, all the spectators know how it will end.

In an article published Wednesday evening on their website, McClatchy points out yet another failing in the FBI’s Amerithrax investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people. The article focuses on the fact that the FBI was able to get a clear genetic fingerprint of a bacterial contaminant that was found in the attack material mailed to the New York Post and to Tom Brokaw (but not to either Senator Daschle or Senator Leahy). This contaminant, Bacillus subtilis, is used in some cases by weapons laboratories as an anthrax simulant, because its behavior in culture and in drying the spores is very similar to Bacillus anthracis but it is easier to handle because it is not pathogenic. I covered the FBI’s failure to link this B. subtilis contaminant to Ivins in this diary in February of 2010.

Darling is the co-chair of the Joint Finance Committee, the committee that passed out the anti-union “budget repair bill” initially, so she is a high-profile target. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel notes that Darling’s district, in the northern suburbs of Milwaukee, voted 54% for Scott Walker in 2010, though they also voted 51-47 for Barack Obama in 2008.

When simply asked whether they wanted Medicare to remain a defined benefits plan or see it changed into a voucher system to buy private insurance, a full 65 percent of Americans said they were opposed to this change, while only 34 percent supported it. After the poll explained that the cost of private insurance would likely rise faster than the value of the vouchers, causing seniors to pay more for insurance (as the CBO says would happen under the House Republican budget), the total opposed jumped to 84 percent.