It’s really not every day a foreign ambassador in Washington stands outside his embassy, calls his head of state a war criminal and hoists a different flag over the embassy. But that’s kinda what happened today when Ali Aujali, the man who is now technically the former Libyan Ambassador to the United States, since he just resigned. He didn’t do it at the Embassy. He stood outside the official residence of the Libyan Ambassador, denounced Qaddafi and raised the pre-Qaddafi Libyan flag. Our Ryan Reilly was there and filed this report — with video.
Since Newt Gingrich almost destroyed the GOP by stumbling into the impeachment fiasco and actually managed to lose seats to the president’s party during a huge sex scandal, you know it’s going to go well for him this time since he’s now stumbled into saying Obama should be impeached too.
His press team is now trying to clean up the mess.
TPM digs a little deeper into the group behind the group behind that sketchy Wisconsin poll.
Bernie Avishai remembers time spent in Libya in 2007 and the people he met there.
In early 2007, on two separate trips, I taught entrepreneurial business planning to an executive training program in Libya. The course was organized by Monitor Group, which I had worked for in the early 1990s, and was now consulting to the government on economic planning and “capacity building.” In all, I got to know about 300 trainees rather well, over more than a month of days and classes.
Keep reading here.
Over the last week unions have mounted protests and rallies in solidarity with public sector unions in Wisconsin. Here’s a selection of pictures from rallies across the USA.
Late Update: A bunch of you have sent in pictures of rallies around the country in solidarity with the folks in Wisconsin. Keep them coming. We’ll package them together into a slide show early next week. Note they need to be your photos, ones you own, otherwise we can’t use them.
Another massive rally today in Madison with tens of thousands outside the state capitol building. Our Eric Kleefeld is there on the scene on his birthday of all days. Check back later this afternoon for his full report.
Our Eric Kleefeld has just filed his latest dispatch from Madison. A massive rally is under way today at the capitol building in Madison. All accounts say it’s bigger than last weekend’s rally. And this time it’s in heavy snow as opposed to a relatively temperate and sunny day. Read Eric’s report.
I just spoke with our reporter on the ground at the Capitol in Madison. The plan was to clear out the Capitol building at 4 PM local time this afternoon — about 40 minutes from now. But at the moment it seems obvious they’re not going to meet that schedule. There are just too many people remaining in the building. Our reporter is now at a press conference with protestors who plan to non-violently refuse to leave the building, thus presumably forcing police to arrest them.
We’ll have more reports coming shortly.
Late Update: We’re less than 15 minutes before the capitol building is supposed to be cleared. The top two floors are almost totally cleared. But our reporter in the building says the bottom two floors are packed and loud with protestors chanting, “Hell no, we won’t go!”
Late Update: New chant “Stand our ground, stand our ground!” Looks like we’re heading toward some very peaceful protest theater, in the best sense of the word, in about 5 minutes.
Later Update: And it’s 4 PM in Madison and a ton of people are still in the building. Official announcement: The Capitol is now closed.
The Wisconsin state capitol at Madison was supposed to be cleared out at 4 PM local time this afternoon. But that deadline came and went and the crowds, albeit thinned out a bit, are still there. Many were ready to non-violently resist the orders to leave. But it hasn’t come to that. Our reporter in the building estimates that no more than a quarter of the people in the building have departed. Read his just-filed report.