Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Which speed is faster, the velocity at which Democrats are throwing Obama under the bus to please the Republicans on Israel, or the velocity at which Democrats are throwing Obama under the bus to please the Republicans on "deem and pass"?

I'm sure the Republicans will completely stop attacking now because of these brave souls. 

It must be so tiring having to try to walk around without a backbone all day.  No wonder they don't have the energy to put up a fight.

Because Clearly CNN Was Jealous Of Pat Buchanan On MSNBC

No, it's not a joke:  CNN really has hired Erick Erickson of Redstate.com as their newest political commentator.  Steve Benen:

This is easily the worst decision CNN has ever made. That the network probably reviewed Erickson's work before hiring him, and offered him a job anyway, suggests CNN's professional standards for what constitutes "an important voice" have all but disappeared.

The point here isn't that it's disappointing to see CNN hire yet another conservative voice, adding to its already-large stable of conservative voices. To be sure, it's frustrating, but it's nothing new.
The problem here is with Erickson himself.

For example, it wasn't long ago when Erickson explained his belief on why the left has a stronger online presence than the right. He attributed it to an asymmetry in free time, since conservatives "have families because we don't abort our kids, and we have jobs because we believe in capitalism."

This is the same Erickson who recently called retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter a "goat f--king child molester," referred to two sitting U.S. senators as "healthcare suicide bombers," praised protesters for "tell[ing] Nancy Pelosi and the Congress to send Obama to a death panel" (he later backpedaled on that one), and described President Obama's Nobel Prize as "an affirmative action quota."

And perhaps my personal favorite was the time, just last year, when Erickson was angry about new environmental regulations relating to dishwasher detergent. He told his readers, "At what point do the people tell the politicians to go to hell? At what point do they get off the couch, march down to their state legislator's house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot?"

There was a point when major professional outlets would look at a voice like this as an "extremist," to be shut out of the mainstream of America's civil discourse. CNN, however, considers this record of radical rhetoric, and concludes it should pay him to offer on-air political commentary.

There really is no way to fail as a wingnut.  The more of a divisive, callous, dimwitted jagoff you are, the more the Village wants you so they can prove they're not the "liberal media".  The Wingers then turn around and demonize any media to the left of FOX News as too liberal anyway, and the process continues unabated.

But as Benen says, the real issue is that CNN is willing to whore itself out and pick up someone as odious as Erickson just to try to give them "conservative cred" that they will never, ever have.

It's pretty pathetic.

Housing Double Dip

Meredith Whitney is predicting a double-dip housing depression in 2010-2011.

The US housing market will face another retreat while mortgage-backed securities and Treasurys are likely to go through a "material" correction, Meredith Whitney, CEO of Meredith Whitney Advisory Group, told CNBC Tuesday.

"The housing market surely will double dip," Whitney told "Worldwide Exchange."

Government programs to support housing have been "murky" and when the modifications caused by them come to an end, a lot of supply may come to the market and that's when the real-estate market is likely to go down, she explained.

Hopes that an improvement in liquidity and continuing investment from China in US assets will prop up mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and Treasurys are exaggerated, Whitney also said.

"The asset classes of MBS and Treasurys are priced for a material correction in my opinion," she said. "The only buyers of agency MBS are the Fed and banks so you see how precarious that market is."

"If the Fed pulls back, that's a really big deal... because there's no substitute buyer."

And that may be the chain reaction that knocks the economy back down into recessionary territory.  After all, the banks are busy playing the same credit default swap games again and using them to put away record profits again this year.

So what happens when the housing market goes through another major collapse?  It'll make 2008 look like a picnic.

The Slaughter Solution

Steve M. has an excellent point on the House use of deem-and-pass to try to spare vulnerable Dems from actually having to take a recorded vote.  It's a tactic both sides have used before, most recently on Bush's No Child Left Behind legislation, but Steve smells a massive backfire here.

Look, Republicans are going to try to turn health care reform into a constitutional crisis no matter what. As it is, lawmakers in more than two thirds of the states are trying to challenge the health care mandate or other provisions of the bill. But using this procedure -- which Republicans say is unconstitutional ...

...conservatives warned that Pelosi's use of deem-and-pass in this way would run afoul of the Constitution. They pointed to a 1998 Supreme Court ruling that said each house of Congress must approve the exact same text of a bill before it can become law. A self-executing rule sidesteps that requirement, former federal appellate judge Michael McConnell argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

... just makes the task of ginning up a constitutional crisis infinitely easier -- and not just because far-right Republican presidents have appointed most of the federal judges who'd hear any challenges.

Our side doesn't understand that the right has figured out how to turn political anger into popular entertainment -- at least for the like-minded. The right has made more Republicans by training right-leaning citizens to turn to talk radio and Fox the way other people turn to HBO or Netflix, for fun. As a result, those citizens really keep up with politics, or at least politics Limbaugh/Fox style.

Right-wing message disseminators are already describing this procedure as the "Slaughter Solution," after Louise Slaughter, the House Rules chair. This crowd -- and some swing voters who also find this programming entertaining -- will get this argument. They'll find it exciting and infuriating. And they're still going to be talking about it in November 2010, and November 2012, just as they were talking about "back room deals" all through Scott Brown's campaign.

I'd add that violent wingnuts are also going to develop an unhealthy fixation on this vote -- the next right-wing crazy who attempts or commits political terrorism will have mentioned this vote specifically in his Web rantings. No, you can't let violent paranoids dictate your actions as a legislator. But nonviolent paranoids are another story. The right has created a lot of them, and they're going to march, and call for impeachment, and offer support to demagoguing state legislators and attorneys general who want to sue over this law, and vote in big numbers in November.

I hope the benefits of the procedure outweigh all that.

As I've said before, the goal here is to undermine the legitimacy of the federal government itself.  If the Club For Growth crew and the Freedomworks astroturfers can convince Republicans, Independents and even Democrats that the very process of governance of this country is immoral and illegal, then they can call for the dissolution of the programs and laws that Club For Growth opposes.

If you want to hamstring government to the point where it has no power to regulate commerce, enforce laws, or ensure the safety of the American people, this is the classic way to do it, and it's working brilliantly.  The solution of course will be to increasingly give those powers to corporations instead.  After all, if the people so despise the government that they prefer the profiteering corporate giants controlling every aspect of our lives, held unaccountable in any way, then there's no reason to have a federal government, right?

And isn't that the endgame of the whole mess?  For Texas to tell California and New York "You're on your own, we're going our own way"?

Steve is right.  This is playing right into the hands of the Tenthers.

A Hero For Shutting Down Unemployment Funds

Here in the NKY, GOP Sen. Jim Bunning dropped by last Saturday night to a fundraiser in Hebron and drew praise from those who thought it was a great idea to cut off benefits to Kentucky's double digit unemployed.

Back home, the former major league pitcher and hall-of-famer is known as a budget hawk standing against out-of-control federal spending. Some 400 people paid $60 to $100 each to reserve seats to honor him at a dinner Saturday evening. McConnell was conspicuously absent, but scores of other politicians lavished Bunning with praise.

"Jim Bunning has been right more than he's been wrong," said Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, a Republican who thinks of Bunning as his mentor. "And history will show that he, more than anyone else, predicted some of the economic problems we're having now and worked to try to prevent them."

Bunning had been widely considered the most vulnerable Republican incumbent heading into this year's elections, and with the GOP trying to retake majority control of the Senate, they encouraged the 78-year-old not to seek a third term. Many feared he couldn't hold the seat against one of the two prominent Democratic candidates, Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo and Attorney General Jack Conway.

But given the change in political mood, Alecia Webb-Edgington – who helped organize the dinner – believes Bunning might have been written off too quickly.

"He's incredibly popular," she said. "I truly believe he could have easily won another term."

Grayson, who is running for the Senate seat, called Bunning "a Hall of Famer in baseball, politics and life."

This is the same Bunning who has been known to curse at reporters, the tenacious campaigner who once described a Democratic challenger of Italian descent as looking like one of Saddam Hussein's sons. He apologized for that comment.

And, last year, he apologized again after he predicted Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, would be dead within a year.

"Jim Bunning may not be known for his sense of humor," Kentucky Republican U.S. Rep. Geoff Davis said in an interview, "but he is a man of unimpeachable integrity."

No need to impeach his integrity, he's on his way home back to NKY here.  The "incredibly popular" Bunning is being told to retire because there's no way he'd win a third term.  The problem is the men trying to replace him:  the oily Trey Grayson and nutbar crazy Rand Paul on the GOP side, and the DINO Jack Conway and good ol' boy insider Dan Mongiardo on the Democratic one.

Kentucky seems increasingly serious about replacing one insane senator with one who's actually far more dangerous.  On the other hand, it seems to be a race to the bottom to see who can piss off more of the Bluegrass State first, Lt. Dan trying to use UK basketball to attack Jack Conway thus drawing the wrath of Kentucky Sports Radio's Matt Jones, or Rand Paul telling the Louisville Metro Republican Women's Club to go intercourse themselves by suddenly pulling out of their sponsored debate with Trey Grayson.

I may be from North Carolina myself, but even I know you don't mess with 'Cats basketball in March in this state.  It's like all four candidates want to lose.

Cleaning Up The Mess, Part 4

With the AIPAC annual convention in town, Republicans are lining up to attack an American president and defend a foreign country on US soil, the country in question of course Israel.

House Minority Leader John Boehner issued a statement Monday criticizing the Obama Administration's "escalated rhetoric" toward the Middle Eastern nation.

The attack came after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a list of demands to Israel in hopes of restoring diplomatic relations between the two countries.

"The administration has demonstrated a repeated pattern since it took office: while it makes concessions to countries acting contrary to U.S. national interests," Boehner (R-Ohio) said in his statement. "It ignores or snubs the commitments, shared values and sacrifices of many of our country’s best allies."

Boehner argued that the President should be more concerned with the behavior of Iran rather than Israel.
 
Clinton took issue with Israel's announcement that it would expand a Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem, which was made during Vice President Joe Biden's visit last week.House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, the House's only Jewish Republican, echoed Boehner, saying "To say that I am deeply concerned with the irresponsible comments that the White House, Vice President, and the Secretary of State have made against Israel is an understatement."

Once again,  I ask readers "Can you name another foreign country that the Republicans would defend so loudly by attacking the President?"  The criticism of Israel here is fair.  They are building settlements just to take land away from Palestinians and ruining any chance of Obama being able to restart peace talks on purpose, then are acting like the injured party and waiting for the GOP to deliver their response.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the balance of power in this relationship.  Not the relationship itself, for Israel is an ally in the Middle East.  But Israel controls the whip hand against America, and this last week in US-Israel relations is yet more proof of that.

What the Republicans call irresponsible, the rest of the world calls "diplomacy".  Only the Republicans would consider the use of such to be wrong.  After all, the only diplomacy most of them believe in comes at the end of a barrel of a weapon.

Israel in the meanwhile has told the US to go screw themselves again.

StupidiNews!

• US Special Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell is delaying his return to Israel as the Obama administration awaits Israel's response.
• President Obama has actually issued his second veto threat on intelligence funding over allowing the GAO to investigate intelligence agencies as Congress wants.
• The US Conference of Catholic Bishops opposes the health care reform bill because of its language on abortion.
• The EU has worked out a plan to back up Greece's emergency loans in order to save the Euro.
• Network analysts are taking a look at the "oldest profession" in Brazil, having now gone online.

Last Call

Chris Dodd's come through on financial reform, including the long-overdue creation of a consumer financial protection agency.

President Barack Obama's stuttering bid to rein in the largest US banks got a shot in the arm Monday, as a key Senate ally unveiled a package of bank reforms described as the most sweeping in 80 years.

Senate banking committee chairman Christopher Dodd outlined plans to regulate the massive US banking sector, warning an overhaul was needed to prevent another large-scale crisis that the US economy might not survive.

Speaking two years after the investment bank Bear Stearns collapsed -- the opening salvo in a crisis that engulfed the globe -- Dodd called for more government control over "too-big-to-fail" banks and for reform of a regulatory system that "remains hopelessly inadequate."

"If there was a watchdog on duty, it did not bark," Dodd said, outlining reforms.

The packages' highlights include the creation of a consumer protection agency and a powerful committee to monitor systemic risks caused by large firms.

The bill would also clamp down on risky investment instruments, which fueled the crisis, and give shareholders a say on big executive bonuses.
 
Dodd warned that any efforts to delay reform invited calamity.

"Neither I nor anyone else can tell you with any degree of certainty that the American economy could survive another crisis of this magnitude," he said.

But the reforms have been the subject of fierce lobbying in Washington, with some of the city's biggest political hitters involved in tussles over what the rules should be, and who should enforce them.

Dodd's decision to house the consumer protection agency at the Federal Reserve was met with barely concealed fury by some of his Democratic colleagues who accused him rewarding a watchdog that failed miserably to prevent the worst financial crisis in decades.

In a bid to address some of those criticisms, Dodd said the agency would be headed by a director appointed by Obama, and would have the power to write rules governing all financial entities.

Remember, the Republicans wanted no financial protection agency at all.  In fact, short of Ron Paul, they don't  think the banks did anything wrong to justify new rules to begin with.  No, it's not a perfect bill or even a very good one, but it sure as hell is better than the nothing we have now.  Dodd finally realized that there's no winning argument here defending the banksters.

Now it's time to watch the Republicans squirm and go on TV saying there's no need to regulate the industry that lost us trillions of dollars and then demanded you and I pay for it.

The Language Of The Heath Care Reform Debate

Nate Silver takes a look at the actual word responses that people used in the latest Gallup poll on health care debate.  This latest poll finds 45% would tell their Representative in the House to vote for the current plan, and 48% would tell their Representative to vote against it.  That's about what it has been for the last several months, give or take a few points.

The real story here is what words people use in responding to the poll.  On the pro side, this is a picture of what words people user the most in responding to Gallup pollsters, the larger the word, the larger share of it being used in a response (graphics here from FiveThirtyEight.com)



The con side is just as interesting:



A couple of observations from the above graphics.  Both sides talk about "insurance" and "need" , both sides agree on that, but the pro side is definitely based around the moral argument for.  The words are there: people, need, afford, everyone, better, now, help.

The con side is equally focused on the economic arguments against.  Those words are there too: Government, cost (and costs), pay (and paying), money, work, economy.

The words "public" and "option" are virtually nowhere in the pro side, and abortion is a pretty small word in the con side.  This truly tells you what the heart of the matter is for each side, and what is the semantics.  The pro side wants to improve people's lives.  The con side argues that government will make health care far worse at our expense.

This brings me to a couple of points:  First, if Bush had left us a better economic situation, and a situation where government itself wasn't so reviled and distrusted, a lot of the argument on the con side I think would be muted.  There would be solid support for this bill.  Ironically the bulk of the argument against health care reform is that Obama's government is just as incompetent as Bush's was, or worse.  Bush nearly wrecking the country actually made it harder for Obama to push this plan, and Bush did such a thorough job of it, it's driven this thing down to the wire.  It has even overcome Medicare, Medicaid, veteran's care and the fact all of those already account for a health chunk of our health care in this country.  It's already government-run, and yet the con side ignores that fact.

Second, Obama was right to go after the numbers on this as much as possible, but he's really failed to show how well government health care can work.  Unfortunately, going back to the Walter Reed hospital scandal, Bush again showed America that the potential for abuse and neglect really is there.  That's now being thrown in Obama's face, fair or not.

People good, government bad.  Everything seems to boil down to this these days.

Nancy Lays Down Her Cards

And daring the GOP to try to beat her hand.

In her most expansive case yet for health reform, Nancy Pelosi argued in a small roundtable with bloggers today that passing it into law would set the stage for a great, long-term debate with the GOP over the proper role of government in our lives — and predicted that it would “take the country in a new direction.”

In the roundtable, Pelosi also provocatively hinted that the House planned to enact further health care reforms once this one is passed, suggesting that this is only the beginning.

And Pelosi also brushed off the claim over the weekend by the House’s number two vote counter, James Clyburn, that the House currently lacked the votes to pass the bill.

Pelosi argued that passing reform would give Dems a tool for drawing a sharp ideological contrast with Republicans and conservatives over time.

“Give them credit for being true to their convictions,” Pelosi said. “They don’t believe in health care for all Americans with any public role in it. That’s by and large what the Republican Party believes.”

Pelosi said passing the bill would allow Dems to undertake a “debate” with Republicans over “what is the balanced role that government should have.”

“We have to take it to the American people, to say, this is the choice that you have,” she said. “This is the vision that they have for your health and well being, and this is the vision that we have.”

Pelosi also clarified Clyburn’s claim over the weekend that Dems didn’t yet have the votes to pass reform. “The reason he said that is we don’t have a bill yet,” she said, though she refused to say how many votes she thought she had in hand.

“I have no intention of not passing this bill,” Pelosi said.

Chips are all in on this one.  Pelosi is confident that this is a done deal,. or will be by this weekend.  The reality may be far different, but she's not showing it.  There are still too many uncommitted members of the House Dems to call victory or defeat here, but there are at least a dozen arms that need twisting if not twenty or more.

Can Pelosi pull this off?

Bachmanniac Fought The Law

And the law won.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is going a step beyond simply pledging to fight efforts to pass the health care bill -- she's openly pronouncing that people should personally declare it unconstitutional and defy it, depending on how it ends up getting passed.

At a rally at the Minnesota State Capitol on Saturday, Bachmann declared illegitimate the potential route that House Democrats could take to pass the health care bill. She was specifically railing against a parliamentary tactic by which the House could skip voting on the Senate bill by declaring it passed as part of the reconciliation bill. Bachmann pronounced this to be taxation without representation. "They have just started a revolution -- and they did it," said Bachmann.

"But mark my words, the American people aren't gonna take this lying down," Bachmann later said. "We aren't gonna play their game, we're not gonna pay their taxes. They want us to pay for this? Because we don't have to. We don't have to. We don't have to follow a bill that isn't law. That's not the American way, and that's not what we're going to do."

To recap, Michele Bachmann, sitting lawmaker in Congress, is advocating open rebellion and revolution against a bill Congress may soon pass into law because...she doesn't like paying for it.  An active member of the federal government is preaching the illegitimacy of that government.  Process questions aside, she's a government employee actively telling people to not pay taxes and not follow the law.  Isn't that, you know, illegal?  Can you imagine the calls for resignation from the entire right wing noise machine if a Democrat went to a rally and said the same thing about legislation Bush passed into law?

At what point does Bachmann resign in protest from the government she so clearly despises?

At what point is she forced out by a Minnesota public embarrassed to have as representing them?

The Cheney Game

And while Liz Cheney has taken a serious hit for her "Al Qaeda Seven" attack on the Justice Department where even conservatives are calling out her McCarthyism, Spencer Ackermann reminds us that the real problem is the Village keeps bringing the Cheney Lie Machine on TV in spite of this.

What keeps the Cheney dynasty propelling forward is its relationship with the media. For all the contempt expressed by Dick Cheney over the years at the press, his post-vice presidential career has demonstrated that he knows very well how to manipulate it. He gives interviews to those who have no interest in challenging him like Politico and the Sunday shows, where theatrics can overcome even the occasional alert or tenacious questioner. Those news-venues won’t “take greater pause before trotting out the former vice president,” because what they’re doing is working for them.


So you’d have to change the game up. You’d have to make Fred Hiatt have to constantly answer for hiring Marc Thiessen and you’d have to put the Washington bureaus of the TV networks in a position where their self-regard as professionals is, publicly, at issue. And you’d have to do it in a way that avoids those malefactors preening that their uncritical embrace of intellectual dishonesty is a sign of integrity — after all, aren’t they brave to give a voice to the other side in the debate that the braying left wants to shut down, etc. The Cheneys only matter as much as the media allow them to matter. 

And given the fact that Karl Rove, John McCain, and now Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay are still allowed to peddle their version of the facts, I don't expect that the Cheneys will find themselves black listed anytime soon.

Why would anyone expect anything different?

Endgame On The Eleven-Dimensional Chessboard

The House has officially begun the process to examine the the Senate bill and markup changes that they want the Senate to vote on in reconciliation.

The House Budget Committee on Sunday evening released text that will serve as the base legislation for the changes the House will seek to the Senate bill this week.

Specifically, the Budget committee released a 2,309-page effort that had been previously recommended to the Education and Labor Committee and Ways and Means Committee last year.

The measure posted online does not include the substantive changes to the Senate healthcare bill that House Democrats will seek. Those changes will be offered during the markups in the Budget and Rules committees, which the budget panel hopes to begin on Monday afternoon.

The House is expected to approve the Senate's healthcare bill along with the package of changes. The Senate would then be expected to approve the package of changes under budget reconciliation rules.

Because the bill will be considered under budget reconciliation rules in the Senate, GOP senators will not be able to filibuster the package and Democrats will not need 60 votes to move the legislation through the Senate.

The House has demanded the Senate approve changes to its healthcare bill in exchange for the House voting for the Senate bill.

House Democrats hope to complete their work by this weekend, before President Barack Obama begins an overseas trip he delayed for several days to focus on healthcare.

The markup by the Budget Committee is the first step toward bringing the measure to the House floor.

And after a long, ugly, painful year-plus long battle, we're heading into the home stretch.  When the chips are down and the hands are shown, will the Dems have the votes in the House to pass the Senate bill?  We still don't know.  But this is the week where this will be decided.  President Obama heads to Ohio again to stump for health care reform while the House prepares to go to work this week.

The pieces are in place.  The forces are on the move.  And the final battle is nigh.  Which side will win?  And at this point, what does "winning" mean?

More on that as the week progresses.

Bush Administration Rehabilitation Through Misinformation

Zandardad flagged me up this week's Frank Rich column I missed yesterday, and it's worth discussing Rich's take on the Karl Rove/Liz Cheney puppet show designed to make America forget about the Bush Administration and blame everything, quite literally, on the Dems.

THE opening salvo, fired on Fox News during Thanksgiving week, aroused little notice: Dana Perino, the former White House press secretary, declared that “we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term.” Rudy Giuliani upped the ante on ABC’s “Good Morning America” in January. “We had no domestic attacks under Bush,” he said. “We’ve had one under Obama.” (He apparently meant the Fort Hood shootings.)

Now the revisionist floodgates have opened with the simultaneous arrival of Karl Rove’s memoir and Keep America Safe, a new right-wing noise machine invented by Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz and the inevitable William Kristol. This gang’s rewriting of history knows few bounds. To hear them tell it, 9/11 was so completely Bill Clinton’s fault that it retroactively happened while he was still in office. The Bush White House is equally blameless for the post-9/11 resurgence of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Iran. Instead it’s President Obama who is endangering America by coddling terrorists and stopping torture.

Could any of this non-reality-based shtick stick? So far the answer is No. Rove’s book and Keep America Safe could be the best political news for the White House in some time. This new eruption of misinformation and rancor vividly reminds Americans why they couldn’t wait for Bush and Cheney to leave Washington.

But the old regime’s attack squads are relentless and shameless. The Obama administration, which put the brakes on any new investigations into Bush-Cheney national security malfeasance upon taking office, will sooner or later have to strike back. Once the Bush-Cheney failures in Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran again come home to roost, as they undoubtedly and explosively will, someone will have to remind our amnesia-prone nation who really enabled America’s enemies in the run-up to 9/11 and in its aftermath.

Everything that went wrong in Bush's first six years was retroactively Clinton's fault, and everything that went wrong in the last two was the fault of Senator Obama and the Dems because they controlled Congress.  Bush was the best President since Reagan, you see.  This has been going on since Obama took office, frankly.  The Clinton blaming after all did get Bush a second term, albeit barely.  But it also assured that the Dems would win and have to take responsibility for cleaning up the mess left behind.

The Republicans really do hope you're stupid enough to put them back in power in 2010 so they can get back to doing the things that created two wars and a financial disaster that drained trillions of dollars from our coffers, trillions of dollars we didn't have.  Obama hasn't fixed all the problems the Republicans left him, so the GOP argument is that after giving the Dems two years, it's time for another sixteen of Republican rule.

Do you really want these jackasses back in charge?  They're not sorry for their mistakes.  They're pinning them on Obama.  They will repeat them as soon as they are given a chance.

StupidiNews!

• Three people connected with the US consulate in Juarez, Mexico have been gunned down in a pair of drive-by shootings.
• Actor Peter Graves is dead at age 83.
• Proposed legislation in Florida would tie half of teacher pay to student performance.
• Ford and Chrysler vehicles have been cited in unintended acceleration deaths as well as Toyota.
• A Pew Research study says a vast majority of online news consumers prefer ads if it means keeping content free.