According to multiple reports, neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman will be charged this afternoon in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. Special prosecutor Angela Corey will make the announcement. There is no word yet on what charge Zimmerman will face, either second-degree murder or manslaughter. Corey could not file first-degree murder charges because she did not impanel a grand jury, a requirement for that charge in Florida.

Gawker announces that they now have a mole at Fox News who will be supplying them with all kinds of goodies to say nothing of making Roger Ailes even more paranoid than he was before, but ‘never fear!’ says Big Brain Bryan Preston, who explains why this can’t be a problem. Oh, wait . . .

I wrote back in January about an FCC proposed rule that would force local TV stations to put the results of the political ad spending on their airwaves online, rather than in an obscure filing room at the station that few people ever see. This would increase the transparency of political spending, which now relies on just a few reports by independent watchdogs and self-reporting from campaigns. Under this new standard, anyone could look up on the Internet the mass of ad spending. It looks like the FCC will do this.

Spain didn’t have a budget problem before the financial meltdown; the had a housing bubble that popped. Unemployment soared, the economy sank, tax revenues fell and their budget deficit widened. The choices were to stimulate their economy and return to growth, which would increase employment, or engage in austerity measures to please the confidence fairies and bond markets. Like the rest of Europe, they went with the latter, but predictably it hasn’t settled debt markets, nor has it reduced their debt relative to GDP.

The Obama administration said it officially will no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act, but authorities are still enforcing it by, among other things, denying visas to bi-national gay couples. However that’s not stopping the legal challenges to bring it to a legal head.

The implosion of Mike Daisey’s Foxconn stories may have, in the short term, returned focus to Apple’s suppliers of their electronic products. Now Foxconn, the notorious Chinese manufacturer, has announced a series of changes to working conditions at the plant.

In addition to the economic truth that tax cuts and growth do not have much of a relationship, what we’ve learned over the past few years is that austerity during a depression is a bonkers idea. And here’s some more evidence of that today. Britain’s latest numbers show a bigger drop of GDP than expected.

Eduardo Porter has an excellent and important article on the relationship between tax rates and economic growth. Here’s a surprise, it’s nothing like conservatives want you to believe. He shows that much higher marginal tax rates on the wealth would not significantly harm economic growth. Other research suggests that the standard line that tax cuts always promote economic growth is also doubtful.

Today in Washington, the Supreme Court begins the first of three epic days of hearings on the Affordable Care Act (or I guess if Obama is calling it Obamacare now, I might as well). The first day of hearings, which start at 10am ET, concerns whether or not the Court should be able to hear the case at all. At least at this time. Further argument on the mandate will be tomorrow and Wednesday will feature argument on whether the mandate can be severed from other provisions, and the requirement to expand Medicaid.

Just as ALEC’s “Stand Your Ground” Laws don’t seem to have done much to stop crime but have definitely allowed paranoid bigots to act out their deadliest desires, ALEC’s voter ID laws, which their backers tout as a way to stop the nonexistent problem of people using fake IDs to vote, have instead kept at least nine voters who have every right to vote from being able to do so. Here are some of their stories