The word public, as in public schools or public option, has become a dirty word in, uh, public life. The question is, can a nation survive once it has abandoned not just moral notions of the public good but the positive notion that there is a public?

A couple weeks ago, we saw the enormous lobby culture massing around swipe fees, the relatively obscure issue that determines where billions of dollars go between banks and retailers. The important thing to start with is that this was already determined through a public process. Last year, Congress held a vote, Dick Durbin got over 60 of his colleagues to support him, the measure survived reconciliation, passed into law, and the Federal Reserve began to implement the rule. The system, therefore, worked. What banks are doing is trying to roll back the clock on the reform. They were paying attention to other matters in FinReg and now they have circled back to this. Because they have money and influence, they think they can just nullify a year’s worth of policymaking.

Erik Prince’s latest scam–to hide from the trial lawyers–involves using retired US servicemen to train Colombian mercenaries to “defend” the United Arab Emirates.

David Allen Green, legal correspondent for the New Statesman out of the UK, has spent the last few days calling attention to a leaked WikiLeaks confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement (NDA), which he revealed in a blog post on May 11. Green has posted a second post on the agreement on his blog, Jack of Kent, and will be posting a summary to the New Statesmanwebsite on May 16, which last time I checked, he intends to glibly title, “NDAs for Dummies.”

I wonder if Bob Gates will be wearing his Beatrice hat for his 60 Minutes interview. I see Newt Gingrich gets the full body treatment on his friend David Gregory’s show.

FDL Book Salon today presents State Power and Democracy: Before and During the Presidency of George W. Bush. Movie Night Monday features Restrepo in light of co-director Tim Hetherington’s death in Libya.

Dahlia Lathwick and Culture of Truth will be Virtually Speaking at 9pm ET.

Watching this video, it’s like like seeing music.

Bugs Bunny starring in Knights Must Fall. This Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon was released on July 16, 1949.

The GOP presidential field for 2012 is a field knee-deep in horseshit. And it’s like they say: where you have lots of horseshit, you gotta have a horse’s ass. Or, as in this case, more than one horse’s ass.

Delaware Governor Jack Markell signed a law approving the use of medical marijuana. His signature makes Delaware the 16th state (plus Washington, DC) to approve the medical use of marijuana.

If documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act do pertain to Hassan Ghul (and Reuters appears to suggest they do), then Ghul was likely not in CIA custody until July 2004. That is, it appears Ghul was not turned over to exclusive CIA custody until six months after he was captured. His initial torture approval came on August 2, and his second torture approval came on August 26.

I was among the 20,0000 people who participated in the May 12 action.– here’s what that many people marching on Wall Street looks like (video care of the super-heroic Austen Guest of the Alliance for a Greater New York).