Police in London arrested five men early Friday but have not charged them as they investigate an alleged threat against the Pope during his ongoing visit to Britain.
The White House confirmed earlier this morning that the President will appoint Elizabeth Warren to a newly created and still fuzzy position as consumer financial protection — dare I say it? — czar:
The President asked me, and I enthusiastically agreed, to serve as an Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He has also asked me to take on the job to get the new CFPB started–right now. The President and I are committed to the same vision on CFPB, and I am confident that I will have the tools I need to get the job done.
The President will announce the appointment in the Rose Garden this afternoon.
At a debate in Delaware tonight with opponent Chris Coons, Republican senate nominee Christine O’Donnell asked voters to look past her youthful discretions.
(click the TPM icon for full sized graph and data)
Here’s the very latest average and trend on the congressional generic ballot. As you can see, the Republican advantage has been blunted a bit in the last few days. But it’s important to remember that there’s some level of bouncing back and forth we’ll see from now through election day.
Two nuggets of information that are interesting to note. A number of polls have come out in the last 36 hours, most of which look measurably better for the Dems than recent soundings have. The GWU poll shows the two sides tied. PPP shows a 1 point Dem advantage. CBS/NYT shows a 2 point GOP advantage.
Most notable though is AP/GfK. If you look at our data chart, they show an eye-popping 10 point spread for the Republicans. That’s for ‘likely voters’. But they also released their numbers for ‘registered voters’. And that number is tied at 47. It gives you a clear sense of how much of a factor uneven levels of voter enthusiasm is playing in the build up to this race.
[ed.note: Get the very latest poll data of every congressional and gubernatorial race in the country at TPMPolltracker. The latest numbers, race averages, interactive graphs and more.]
When I was high school, I remember always thinking: “Why so much pro-Muslim, pro-jihad propaganda in my textbooks?”
And now it seems the folks at the Texas Board of Education, who through some weird quirks on the national textbook market are the dominant force in determining what’s in our nation’s textbooks, has decided to “root out gross pro-Islamic, anti-Christian distortions in social students texts” including “sanitized definitions of ‘jihad’ that exclude religious intolerance or military aggression against non-Muslims … which undergirds worldwide Muslim terrorism.”
Yet another Christine O’Donnell-ism surfaces. This one of more recent vintage. From 2007, on The O’Reilly Factor: “American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains. So they’re already into this experiment.”
Copyright expert tells TPM that the Fox News/Chris Wallace lawsuit against Democrat Robin Carnahan’s Senate campaign is a “dramatic step” with little precedent.
Mitch McConnell revises and extends his remarks on who’s been hit the hardest in the recession.
In other news, a group of 31 Democrats in the House have informed Nancy Pelosi that they want all the 2001 tax cuts extended, not just the ones on incomes under $250,000 per year.
But here’s the thing. I think this is a case where it’s really helpful to be controlling the Speaker’s gavel. Extending the tax cuts for incomes under $250,000 doesn’t rule out extending them later for those over that threshold. There’s obviously a lot of rhetorical gobbledygook in this debate and chances to spin this a million different ways. But voting on an extension for incomes under $250k doesn’t do anything to incomes higher. That’s just a fact. It leaves everything in place.
Republicans can say that’s ‘raising taxes’. But the vote isn’t. It doesn’t do anything one way or another. And Democrats can simply say, ‘Let’s do these now. And the election will determine what happens with the rest.’ That’s not just good politics for the Dems, it’s good civics too. Elections should be about something. And both parties seem intent on fighting the election on the basis of this division. So why not let them? If Republicans win big, they can do it in January. And the Dems who want all the cuts extended can tell voters they’re going to vote for it after the election.
The question is: are they really going to vote against extending the tax cuts for 98% people pre-election? Because it doesn’t include the other 2%. I doubt it.
Late Update: TPM Reader CL points out that I seem to have forgotten the point I myself made only yesterday: that 100% of people who pay income taxes get a cut under the Obama Plan. What Republicans want is even more cuts for people who make over $250k a year. But they get cuts under the Obama Plan just like everyone else.