Clearly, there’s a lot of violence in Mexico tied to the Mexican government’s attempted crackdown on its drug cartels. And the Mexicans are quite legitimately pressuring us to limit the number of guns being smuggled from the US into Mexico, which are fueling the fire. And if Mexico degenerates to the level of Colombia where for many years the key cartels have operated as rivals to the government — clearly beyond the legitimate government’s ability to bring them to heel — then that’s a big problem for us, given our proximity and long border, etc. But I keep hearing these stories about violence spilling over into the US, questions from whether we may need to deploy the US army to our own border, vague stories about death squads in the US. I’m not saying there’s nothing to it. But a lot of this has the feel to me of one of those stories ginned up by politicians and restless news outlets where there ends up being much much less there than meets the eye. Part of me wonders whether it’s a recrudescence of the illegal immigration hysteria of last two years.

Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano agreed to go on MSNBC this morning on the condition that she be asked only one question — and no follow-ups — about the threat assessment DHS issued on right-wing extremist groups?

That’s what the Morning Joe crew said:

I don’t get why Napolitano is being so defensive about this (or, for that matter, why MSNBC would agree to such a restrictive condition). This was a standard-issue report, and as we reported yesterday it was produced under the auspices of a holdover from the Bush Administration. On top of that, DHS issued a similar threat assessment recently on left-wing extremism.

I’ve been saying on the site how much I hooked on my Amazon Kindle. But from the beginning my big worry has been the market power — arbitrary power — this gives Amazon over your entire book collection. Here’s a story about a guy who bought a Kindle, liked it, used it, etc. But then Amazon decided he’d returned too many real world items. So they turned off his Amazon account, thus making his $300-plus Kindle into a mostly useless piece of plastic. He had to spend a lot of time begging and pleading with Amazon customer service to be allowed to use his Kindle again.

Democrat Scott Murphy, who’s now leading in the super-tight NY-20 race, ought to at least buy dinner for whoever oversaw his campaign’s absentee ballot operation because Murphy actually lost narrowly on Election Day, but he’s making up for it with a strong showing among absentee voters.

Fox anchor Megyn Kelly: “Fox News covered these Tea Parties, and we were one of the only organizations to give it any publicity or p.r. …”

Watch.

TPM Reader AN wonders who’s interests are being served …

As I am sure you’ve seen, there have been a lot of recent reports of TARP funds recipients basically just itching to return the funds so they could get the federal government off their backs.  Goldman Sachs is the most recent example and it appears their new brilliant plan is to raise half the funds they would need to repay the TARP funds by raising new capital.  Former Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, had an excellent response to this:  “If banks now claim they want to return the money because they don’t need it, why do they have to raise new capital to replace the money from we the people in order to repay the government?” 
 
There is one aspect of this that I haven’t really heard people talkabout but think is really important and that’s the moral hazard issue that’s floating around in the background.  It seems that the banks’ big problem with the conditions placed on TARP fund recipients has a lot (although not exclusively) to do with the limits on executive compensation.  Now, at some level I can understand these CEOs being annoyed about having their and their subordinates’ compensation significantly limited–especially in the cases of those that came in to clean up messes they inherited (although I really don’t think any of them really have clean hands in all this).  But the problem is they have a specific fiduciary duty to act not in their own best interest but in the best interest of their company’s shareholders.  And when looked at through that prism its hard not to conclude that these CEOs are putting their own self-interest ahead of their company’s shareholders.   Even if Wachovia and Goldman Sachs can afford to pay back the TARP funds right now, what’s to say economic conditions won’t worsen to the point where that money would have come in handy in navigating difficult times? Shouldn’t these companies be holding onto this money until the economic environment improves enough for them to be confident that they can repay the funds and still have enough money left over to meet their company’s needs? 
 
This is where much of the root problem lays.  I get the sense that a lot of these guys came of age at a time when the big investment banks were privately owned and hence a time where senior executives’ interests were closely aligned to their company’s interest.  But now they have a bunch of sucker stockholders they can dump a lot of the risk onto (all while keeping windfall profits in the form of bonuses and golden parachutes).  I am frankly surprised that a lot of the larger institutional investors that own bank stocks haven’t stepped forward to demand that these CEOs focus less on their compensation and more on their bank’s overall health.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-DSM-IV) accuses fellow Minnesota congressman, and practicing Muslim, Rep. Keith Ellison (D), of cavorting with scary “flying Imams.”

MSNBC is now picking up on the story of Gov. Perry of Texas hinting that the Stimulus Bill may be such a blow to the constitution that Texas may have to secede from the Union. But according to MSNBC, while Perry was making the comments, the crowd started chanting, “Secede, secede, secede …” We’re going to try to find out more. But from what we can tell, Perry didn’t seem to have a problem with that. We’re also trying to get comment from Perry’s office on his current position on possibly taking his state out of the Union.

High-speed rail won’t solve all of our transportation problems or free us from our dependence on oil, foreign or domestic, but it’s an important element in a broader revitalization of America’s infrastructure.

Here’s a map of the corridors that are in the running for the new federal funds the Obama administration announced today it is making available for high-speed rail (click for larger version):

There’s more on this particular initiative posted here.

We’ve just gotten comment from Gov. Perry’s press spokesman on the governor’s apparent interest in seceding from the union. It’s pretty vague but basically it seems like he’s saying no need to secede for now. But in the future, who knows. Basically it was vague blah, blah sort walking back the controversy but not actually denying or walking back from anything. We’ll have the details shortly.

Late Update: Chris Matthews has Tom DeLay on Hardball and they’re going back and forth on Perry’s flirtation with taking Texas out of the United States. DeLay did admit that secession is against the law and can’t happen. But after saying that he actually seems pretty into the idea. And now they have a clip for Rush getting on the bandwagon too. From it seems like the Republicans, now centered heavily in the South, have found their issue to come back into power in the US — building up a head of steam to leave the country altogether.