Elizabeth Drew’s piece in the New York Review of Books is making the rounds, and this passage jumped out at me.

Following up on the Filibernie post from earlier today, the president is looking at revenue increases as he enters the debt reduction talks. Too bad he is not even close to the 1:1 cuts for revenue that Senator Sanders is demanding.

Not only does the crummy economic news weaken what had been a position of relative strength for the President, but it shows that if he’s got a plan, it’s either not working or not designed to work. Obama’s plan–to focus on the deficit–only makes it more likely we’ll see ongoing cuts to public employment.

Is that really the plan, Mr. President?

Welcome to the next decade, when we finally get the report telling us what we knew back in 2007 when this investigation started, that Rove politicized the government.

Funny how Republicans never get told, “Take it or leave it.”

Henry Waxman, the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, just released a statement announcing that he would drop controversial net neutrality legislation, and call on the FCC to use their authority to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service. This is a major victory for net neutrality advocates and a loss for the telecoms.

Rep. Henry Waxman has been trying to enshrine the terrible compromise promulgated by Google and Verizon into law, by pushing a truly terrible bill on broadband that strips the FCC of rulemaking and classification ability, and gives wireless Internet providers carte blanche to discriminate in favor of their products.

Of course, now that we have the next generation of wireless technologies, Google and the telecoms will do their best to control and monetize them. Not only have they persuaded gullible tea partiers to join the cause, taking advantage of baseless fears about government takeovers of the Internet (strike government and replace with corporate and you’re on to something), but they’re getting help from prominent Democrats as well.

BP sucessfully installed their new, tighter cap on the Macondo well yesterday, and will now begin testing the valves and the other functions. The goal is to fully capture all of the leaking oil from the well, and officials believe they can achieve that goal. This would not stop the drilling of the relief wells, seen as key to permanently closing up the spill.

As the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico approaches its 2-month mark, there are a few points that deserve to be made, as update. The world is now starting to appreciate the enormity of this disaster, which is likely already the largest “accidental” oil spill in history.