More thread.

Predictable:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) � a key architect of upcoming Senate energy legislation � said Wednesday that lawmakers should widen President Obama�s newly announced expansion of offshore oil-and-gas drilling. Graham called the White House plan a �good first step� but added, �there is more that must be done to make this proposal meaningful and the game-changer we all want it to become.�

�Among the areas we still need to address � encouraging states to allow exploration by sharing a portion of the revenue raised from oil and gas drilling, opening even more areas of the Eastern Gulf to exploration, the inclusion of viable drilling sites in the Atlantic and Pacific, and expanding the list of areas we inventory for possible reservoirs of oil and gas,� Graham said.

We are choosing between center right and the extreme right on off shore drilling. For all I know, the center right or extreme right positions are the correct ones here. But it is clear that the progressive position is no longer on the table.

Speaking for me only

Booman just can not accept that he is endorsing triangulation. So he invents a new definition - triangulation is NOT what Barack Obama does, even though it is exactly like triangulation:

I am going to posit that triangulation is a pejorative. It is a political act that is contrary to the interests of principled people on either the right or the left. Its use puts the immediate needs of the president over the needs of his party. It weakens his party and harms the issues for which his party stands. It's possible to argue otherwise. Some might see triangulation as a savvy strategy that is appropriate in certain circumstances (e.g., a Democratic president faced with a Gingrich Congress). But, I believe we are correct to condemn triangulation, provided we are careful to be sure we know what we mean by the term. And we are not careful.

All of this is a prelude to Booman tying himself in knots to explain why Bill Clinton triangulated but Barack Obama is not triangulating. Silly stuff. I'll explain on the flip.

To me, the attraction of the Kindle has been the pricing of books. Instead of paying $30 for a new hardcover, you can pay $9.99.

That price is now going to jump to $15.00 as the result of the top three publishers winning a price war with Amazon and Apple being on the publisher's side.

The e-book agreements, with CBS Corp.'s Simon & Schuster and News Corp.'s HarperCollins Publishers, mirror deals struck this year with Apple for the iPad: Some new best sellers will be priced at $9.99 but most will be priced at $12.99 to $14.99.

[More...]

Open Thread.

d-day:

Dan Froomkin now sizes up the insurance industry�s next move, and agrees that they will scrap for every advantage to turn the ACA even more to their advantage[.]

When the focus is on, as it was on the insurance companies' argument that they could elude the prohibition on discrimination against children with pre-existing conditions, the regulators won't be captured. But the Secretary of HHS can not maintain that level of scrutiny, even if they wanted to. And the assault will be constant. Here is the latest:

We've had enough of ... triangulation and poll-driven politics. "That's not what we need right now." - Barack Obama, October 2007

NYTimes Editorial:

For years, the debate over offshore drilling for gas and oil has been a war of sound bites between the �drill now, drill everywhere� crowd that dominated the Bush administration and the Republican campaign in 2008, and members of the environmental community who would leave the country�s outer continental shelf untouched.

[President Obama's] new strategy � the result of more than a year of work by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar � also confronts an essential political reality: the Senate will insist on offshore drilling as part of a broader bill, expected after Easter, addressing climate change and other energy-related problems. Mr. Obama is trying to anticipate and shape that discussion by identifying areas that he thinks can responsibly be opened for exploration while quarantining others.

(Emphasis supplied.) Only a blind devotee can deny this is triangulation. Whether it is a good idea or not, it is obviously triangulation.

Speaking for me only

Who's going home on American Idol? I'll guess Didi or Tim. So long as it's not Crystal, Casey or Lee, I'm okay with it. I'd like to see Andrew Garcia stay a little longer too. (No spoilers please.)

L.L. Cool J isn't the only one complaining about Fox's use of canned interviews for Sarah Palin's special show. Toby Keith isn't happy either. I bet Levi won't pull those kind of stunts on his new reality show, which he describes as Jersey Shore on Ice.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

The spokesman for the Swiss Ministry today told the Associated Press that Switzerland will not act on the extradition request for Roman Polanski until a California appeals court rules on his appeal of the trial court's denial of his motion to be sentenced in absentia.

"The Justice Ministry will decide on the extradition only after the California Court of Appeal has decided whether to hold proceedings in absentia," Galli said. "This action allows the extradition process to adapt to the US proceedings."

The prosecution filed its brief yesterday urging Polanski's return. I haven't found a copy of either Polanski or the state's latest briefs anywhere, so I can't say which is stronger. But I continue to believe Polanski is getting a very raw deal here and the case should be dismissed due to the improper conduct of the judge. The newly discovered notes of DA Gunson confirm the Judge promised no more than 90 days, and the extradition treaty doesn't apply to such short sentences. [More...]

A federal judge in San Francisco ruled today in an 45 page opinion (available here) that former President Bush's warrantless NSA wiretapping program was illegal.

The case involved the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, an Islamic charity, and two of its lawyers, Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor, who alleged their conversations were illegally intercepted. The Court granted their motion for summary judgment finding the Government is liable for damages for illegally wiretapping their conversations without a FISA warrant. [More...]

Open Thread.

Note to New Progressives ("Obama's announcment begins to give a clear picture of what those concessions will be"), get your stories straight:

[B]y announcing the drilling policy without seeking to extract concessions [. . .]

And I agree that off shore drilling is not like school uniforms. One of these policies actually matters. Guess which one?

From the President's remarks on his historic new off shore drilling policy:

There will be those who strongly disagree with this decision, including those who say we should not open any new areas to drilling. [. . .] On the other side, there are going to be some who argue that we don�t go nearly far enough [. . .] So the answer is not drilling everywhere all the time. But the answer is not, also, for us to ignore the fact that we are going to need vital energy sources to maintain our economic growth and our security. Ultimately, we need to move beyond the tired debates of the left and the right, between business leaders and environmentalists, between those who would claim drilling is a cure all and those who would claim it has no place. Because this issue is just too important to allow our progress to languish while we fight the same old battles over and over again.

(Emphasis supplied.) Compare this to President Bill Clinton's statement on welfare reform:

If the president has already effectively given Republicans what they wanted on energy, what will he get in return? A Hill staffer I know emails with an alternative look at the same dynamic, suggesting President Obama is playing a game we've seen before.:

Obama preempts the other side's most resonant arguments, which forces them to come up with more and more extreme claims in order to differentiate themselves. In the end, he occupies the reasonable middle ground and his opponents are Palinized. [. . . T]he policy is a tailored, measured version of what the Republicans have urged [. . .] Republicans are sort of forced to twist and parse, and even to oppose things they have long supported, just because the Administration hasn't gone far enough.

[MORE . . .]

I can't see how Jesse James will ever get Sandra Bullock back, but checking into an inpatient AZ facility specializing in "drug, alcohol and sex addiction, as well as other disorders" is probably a good start for his new life sans-Sandra.

Was Bullock really that clueless? Like Tiger, it seems James was leading a double life, not just having an occasional fling. Can any amount of "treatment" restore the trust necessary to rebuild these relationships?

Last week, an Ann Coulter appearance was canceled by the University of Ottowa. A few days ago, Karl Rove was heckled at an event promoting his book, threatened with a citizen's arrest by Code Pink, and ended up leaving the stage.

Now the University of Wyoming has canceled a speech on education and social justice by William Ayers.

While Ms. C. is just a media maven with no expertise that could rise to the level of a contribution of ideas, Ayers is an expert in his field, and arguably, Rove, as a political strategist who worked closely with a President, had information and insights to share with the public.

Canceling speeches and appearances for objections to ideology, and misrepresenting the grounds for nixing the appearance as a "security risk" seems like a bad idea. What's causing this trend, and is there a solution?