On Thursday at the Commonwealth Club here in San Francisco, attorney David Boies, one of the head litigators in the landmark Perry v. Schwarzenegger case, reflected on Judge Vaughn Walker's decision to overturn California's Proposition 8. Mr. Boies argues that opponents of gay marriage rely on slogans, rather than facts, concluding "when you're up on the witness stand, eventually there's no place to hide, and when you can't hide, discrimination falls." 

Mr. Boies noted that "discrimination can survive in the darkness, it can survive unchallenged but it can't survive in the marketplace of ideas." He then added that it was "a great day for all Americans" because any discrimination diminishes all of us.

At times emotional, he said that the country was founded on "a culture of equality" and though imperfect at that start over the long sweep of the nation's history we have expanded the scope of that equality. It is only in the area of gay and lesbians rights that the state still stands in to deny an entire class of people their constitutional rights. Mr. Boies said the ruling being "an important first step" in ending discrimination against Americans on the basis of their sexual orientation.

"Fundamentally, we cannot allow individual rights to be determined by any majority, no matter how large," emphasized Mr. Boies. "If you do then you don't need a Constitution, the whole point of a Constitution is to say there are certain rights that the majority does not have the right to take away from the minority and that we are not going to put, as the Supreme Court said in 1933, fundamental rights up for a vote."

At one point he noted that the "concept of equality is baked into the American soul" but lamented how nations like México, Argentina, Spain and South Africa have moved ahead of us in the "march to equality."

David Boies is a lawyer and Chairman of Boies, Schiller and Flexner. He has been involved in various high-profile cases in the United States. Following the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, he represented Vice President Al Gore in the lawsuit Bush v. Gore. Together with former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, the opposing attorney in the Bush v. Gore case, Mr. Boies have significantly changed the course and the parameters of the debate over gay marriage.

The full program including all David Boies' remarks is available at Fora TV.

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As of July 31st, only 42.8 percent of President Obama’s judicial nominees had been confirmed. No other President in recent memory even comes close to such a dismal number. Filibusters, anonymous holds, and other obstructionary tactics have become the norm. It is all part of the strategy employed by the GOP to derail the Obama Administration. It is an unrelenting war against the President and his Administration but the President seems incapable of taking the Republicans to task. This isn't Harry Reid's job, it is the President's obligation to defend his nominees and to shame the Republicans publicly. 

President Obama did get "a bit annoyed" with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell during meeting with Congressional leaders on July 27th. According to Roll Call, President Obama used the private closed door meeting to urge McConnell to “work with us” to confirm judicial nominees instead of using parliamentary procedures “time and time again to deny them.” He lamented that some have been waiting for eight months for confirmation, despite many being “voted out of committee unanimously.” Taking the GOP to task private is worthless. The President needs to roll up his sleeves and get down in the mud and fight.

Uncontroversial nominees are waiting months upon months for a floor vote, and even district court nominees—low-ranking judges whose confirmations have never been controversial in the past—are now routinely filibustered. Nominations grind to a halt in many cases even after the Senate Judiciary Committee has unanimously endorsed a nominee. As of the end of July, there were 23 nominations that had cleared the Judiciary Committee but were still awaiting Senate action because a Senator had place an anonymous hold on the nomination. These are shameful tactics but the President by not calling the GOP out on them only further encourages the Republicans to further stall the Administration.

From the Center for American Progress:

There is a simple explanation for the sudden drop-off in confirmation rates—obstructionists in the Senate are using filibusters and holds at an unprecedented rate. And it is nearly impossible to break the filibusters and holds on Obama’s nominees.

Although a supermajority of senators can break a filibuster, once a filibuster is broken Senate rules still permit up to 30 hours of floor debate before taking a vote. Presently, 48 of President Obama’s judicial nominees await confirmation. At 30 hours per nominee, the Senate would have to spend 1,440 hours—60 entire days—to act on each of these nominations.

If Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) were to cancel all recesses on August 1 and require the Senate to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, doing nothing but considering judicial nominees, the last nominee would not be confirmed until well into autumn—and that’s assuming that the Senate passed no bills, confirmed no other nominees, and took up no other matters for this entire period!

The picture is even worse when you factor in executive branch nominees. According to the White House, President Obama presently has 240 unconfirmed nominees. Confirming each of these nominees would require a massive 300 days—10 entire months—of 24 hour work days doing nothing but confirmations.

It is easy to manipulate the Senate rules to create a crisis. If a minority of senators broadly object to the Senate’s entire agenda, then it is literally impossible to confirm more than a fraction of the hundreds of judges, executive branch officials, ambassadors, and other nominees that each president has a responsibility to appoint, even if the Senate shuts down all other legislative business to do so.

If anything, the real surprise is not that President Obama is experiencing unprecedented obstructionism. It’s that, given such dysfunctional Senate rules, it has taken so long for such a confirmation crisis to emerge.

On Friday, the Senate adjourned for a month and sent back to the White House the nominations of UC Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu and San Francisco Magistrate Edward M. Chen. President Obama nominated Liu to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in February. Chen was a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union before becoming a federal magistrate. Obama nominated him last year to be a U.S. district judge in San Francisco.

Under a rarely invoked rule, the Senate must agree to carry over pending nominations when it goes on a 30-day recess. But Republican leaders objected to carrying over several disputed nominees, including Liu and Chen. So now the President must renominate them when Senate returns in September.

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Frankly, it would take too long to debunk why a regressive flat structure is not in society's best interest but that is one of the points these two gay Tea Partiers are missing. It's rather disconcerting that so many Americans continue to buy into the creed of libertarian style individualism over the collective good as these two young men do. They do, on the other hand, argue quite eloquently why the government should not be in the business of regulating marriage. Still the suggestion that we should abolish the income tax is hard to phantom. That would lead to a most inegalitarian society that would threaten the very existence of American democracy. 

It is also amazing to me that conservatives think the world around them comes cheap. They love to complain about taxes but they don't seem to realize to that taxes also pay for things like electric lighting and roads.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue. State money for local roads was cut in many places amid budget shortfalls.

In Michigan, at least 38 of the 83 counties have converted some asphalt roads to gravel in recent years. Last year, South Dakota turned at least 100 miles of asphalt road surfaces to gravel. Counties in Alabama and Pennsylvania have begun downgrading asphalt roads to cheaper chip-and-seal road, also known as "poor man's pavement." Some counties in Ohio are simply letting roads erode to gravel.

The moves have angered some residents because of the choking dust and windshield-cracking stones that gravel roads can kick up, not to mention the jarring "washboard" effect of driving on rutted gravel.

But higher taxes for road maintenance are equally unpopular. In June, Stutsman County residents rejected a measure that would have generated more money for roads by increasing property and sales taxes.

"I'd rather my kids drive on a gravel road than stick them with a big tax bill," said Bob Baumann, as he sipped a bottle of Coors Light at the Sportsman's Bar Café and Gas in Spiritwood.

Rebuilding an asphalt road today is particularly expensive because the price of asphalt cement, a petroleum-based material mixed with rocks to make asphalt, has more than doubled over the past 10 years. Gravel becomes a cheaper option once an asphalt road has been neglected for so long that major rehabilitation is necessary.

"A lot of these roads have just deteriorated to the point that they have no other choice than to turn them back to gravel," says Larry Galehouse, director of the National Center for Pavement Preservation at Michigan State University. Still, "we're leaving an awful legacy for future generations."

It was a progressive income tax - the highest tax bracket during the Eisenhower Administration was 91 percent - that built the Interstate Highway System, the largest and most extensive infrastructure ever built, but it is a Reaganite ideology that is undoing the progress we have built so much so that we are forced to turn our asphalt roads back to gravel.

I've been meaning to update the saga of Hollman Morris, the Colombian journalist whose visa was denied by the US embassy in Bogotá. In its original decision, US officials denied the student visa for Morris to come study as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard under the "terrorist activities" section of the USA Patriot Act.

I am happy to report that the US State Department has reversed its decision and has granted Mr. Morris the visa. It speaks well of the Obama Administration that it can admit mistakes quickly and forthrightly. The decision was reversed on July 27th. From the press release:

The U.S. State Department has reversed its decision to deny a visa to leading Colombian journalist Hollman Morris. He is now free to travel to the United States, where he will begin a yearlong fellowship at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Reacting to the news, Nieman Foundation Curator Bob Giles said “We’re very pleased that the situation has been resolved this way. Many concerned individuals worked together to support Hollman during the past month and we’re looking forward to having him join us at Harvard. His valuable expertise and insights will be a welcome addition to our new class of Nieman Fellows.”

Last month a U.S. consular official in Bogota told Morris that he was being denied a visa under the terrorist activities section of the Patriot Act. That decision was widely condemned by individuals and groups including the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma and others, many of whom lobbied on behalf of Morris.

An independent television journalist, Morris has reported extensively on his country’s civil war and resulting human rights abuses. His television show “Contravía” has been critical of alleged ties between the administration of outgoing Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, Colombia’s right-wing paramilitary groups and the Colombian armed forces. Uribe once called Morris “an accomplice to terrorism” for building contacts with the country’s FARC rebels in the course of his reporting. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Colombia’s largest rebel group, is on the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations.

Many journalists and human rights activists view efforts to link Morris with FARC as the Colombian government’s way to discredit his work. Last year, reports surfaced showing that Morris was one of many high profile critics of the government who were subjected to illegal wiretapping and surveillance by Colombia’s intelligence agency.

Morris has traveled to the United States a number of times in the past, has met with high-ranking U.S. officials to discuss Colombia’s human rights issues and in 2007 won the Human Rights Defender Award, presented annually by Human Rights Watch.

Here's a report that Hollman Morris filmed about an attack on the indigenous community of Toribío, Cauca back in 2005. There's been much progress in Colombia under Álvaro Uribe these past eight years but in much of rural Colombia the situation is much as it ever was. The last attack by the FARC on Toribío was this past March and just three days ago a Colombian soldier, Juan Diego López Bermúdez, age 25, died fighting the guerrillas just outside the town.

Toribío is a Nasa indigenous community caught between the FARC and the Colombian army. Hollman Morris with his weekly television programme on Colombia's public television channel has brought the war in rural Colombia into the homes of urban Colombia. In reporting on the sometimes indiscriminate response of the Colombian army to FARC attacks and by interviewing all actors involved in the conflict including guerrilla spokesmen, Hollman Morris earned the enmity of the Uribe Administration.

Although indigenous peoples make up just three percent of Colombia's population they account for eight percent of the 4.5 million Colombians who are internally displaced peoples. Virtually all indigenous groups in Colombia have been affected by forced displacement or are at serious risk of being displaced from their ancestral lands (UNHCR, 2005). Similarly, Afro-Colombians, who make up just over ten percent of the population, are also disproportionately affected by this phenomenon, representing 17 percent of all IDPs.

Colombia's 80 different indigenous peoples have long been in the front line of the 62-year conflict as illegal armies from across the political spectrum seek territorial control over their reservations, domination over drug crops or smuggling routes. An estimated 30,000 indigenous people have been killed during this period but 45 percent of these have been in the last eight years as the Uribe Administration took war to the guerrillas.

It is on behalf of Colombia's indigenous people that I urge you to oppose the Colombia Free Trade Agreement that the Obama Administration is now seeking to ratify. This agreement must be seen for what it is in Colombia - the last step in a vast redistribution of land pushing millions off the land so that wealthy agricultural interests can just take the land with impunity. The IDPs are not a by-product of the Colombian conflict. They are one of the goals.

Some of the other stories and other interesting reads making the rounds today.

Lt. General (ret). James Clapper won Senate approval to become the Director of National Intelligence after Senator John McCain removed his hold on the nomination. Senator McCain placed a hold on the Clapper nomination in order to force the Obama Administration to release a report assessing a controversial spy satellite program. McCain released his hold Tuesday once he got the information he was seeking. The retired three-star Air Force general, whose intelligence career spans two score and six years, will be the fourth Director of National Intelligence in five years. More from the Wall Street Journal.

The Senate sent the nomination of Peter Diamond, one of President Barack Obama's three nominees for the Federal Reserve Board, back to the White House because of objections from at least one lawmaker. Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, the senior Republican on the Banking Committee, said last week that Diamond, while a “skilled economist,” may not be qualified to make decisions on monetary policy.

The Senate took no action yesterday on the other two nominees, including San Francisco Fed President Janet Yellen for Vice Chairman and Sarah Bloom Raskin for a Governor slot, leaving them to await confirmation after senators return September 13. That means that if Governor Donald Kohn, whose separate term as Vice Chairman ended in June, departs as planned on September 1, the Fed will work with only four of seven Governors for the indefinite future. More from Bloomberg News.

Jonathan Chait of the New Republic looks at the tightening margins for confirming Supreme Court Justices and wonders if Elena Kagan might be President Obama's last nominee to the Court.

The New York Times profiles US District Court Judge of Vaughan Walker who wrote the landmark decision that overturned Proposition 8 in California. The title Conservative Jurist, With Independent Streak pretty much says it all.

In a related story, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown filed briefs asking Chief U.S District Judge Vaughn Walker to lift his stay and allow gays and lesbians to marry while the Perry v Schwarzenegger winds its way through the appeal process. More from CNN.

Michael Cooper in the New York Times writes on the extremes to which state and local governments are going in order to balance budgets. Clayton County, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta shut down its entire public bus system. Its last buses ran on March 31, stranding 8,400 daily riders. Colorado Springs switched off a third of its 24,512 streetlights to save money on electricity, while trimming its police force and auctioning off its police helicopters while Hawaii closed its schools on 17 Fridays during the past school year to save money, giving students the shortest academic year in the nation.

The FDIC seized the assets of Ravenswood Bank, a bank in Illinois. Ravenswood Bank is the 109th FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the thirteenth in Illinois. The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $68.1 million. Twenty-five banks failed in 2008 while 140 banks failed in 2009.

David Weigel, now working for Slate, writes in the Washington Post on the five myths of the Tea Party.

Mark Hurd, the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, was forced to resign today in the wake of a disclosure that he had allegedly falsified documents to conceal a relationship with a former contractor. The HP Board of Directors said in a statement that its standards of business conduct were violated. Hurd's "systematic pattern" of submitting falsified financial reports to hide the relationship convinced the board that "it would be impossible for him to be an effective leader moving forward and that he had to step down," HP general counsel Michael Holston said on a conference call Friday with analysts. Hurd will receive a $12.2 million severance payment.

Editorial of the Day
The editorial board of the New York Times castigates the GOP for their xenophobia and fear-mongering for American votes.

Leading Republicans have gotten chilly toward the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to people born in the United States. Senators Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Jeff Sessions and Jon Kyl have been suggesting that the country should take a look at it, re-examine it, think it over, hold hearings. They seem worried that maybe we got something wrong nearly 150 years ago, after fighting the Civil War, freeing enslaved Africans and declaring that they and their descendants were not property or partial persons, but free and full Americans.

As statements of core values go, the 14th Amendment is a keeper. It decreed, belatedly, that citizenship is not a question of race, color, beliefs, wealth, political status or bloodline. It cannot fall prey to political whims or debates over who is worthy to be an American. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” it says, “are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Meeting in Kansas City, the Republican National Committee adopted a new schedule for the 2012 presidential primaries on Friday. The new plan pushes back the start of the first contests to the first Tuesday in February. Under the new schedule, no state would hold a primary or caucus before February 6, 2012. Iowa and New Hampshire retain their status as the nation's first contests while South Carolina and Nevada are also allowed to hold February events.

Other states would begin holding their primaries or caucuses in March though most contests would come in April or May. The new schedule will go into effect only if the Democratic National Committee adopts similar primary rules before the end of the year.

The RNC also voted to retain its proportional awarding of delegates rather switch to a winner take all system. From the Washington Post:

The proposal, drafted by a special RNC panel, gained approval from more than the necessary two-thirds of the committee's 168 members.

Party leaders hailed the vote as a historic change in the presidential selection process, one that would avoid the development of a single national primary in which states choose to hold their nominating contests on the same day.

The new schedule is designed to make it difficult for a candidate to rack up an insurmountable number of delegates early in the process, forcing candidates to campaign across the country.

Under the new schedule, no state would hold a primary or caucus before the first Tuesday in February 2012, in attempt to avoid a repetition of 2008, when the Iowa caucuses were held Jan. 3.

Iowa and New Hampshire would retain their status as the nation's first contests, held in February, joined by South Carolina and Nevada.

Other contests would generally be held in April or later, although states would have the option of holding votes in March, provided convention delegates chosen at those elections were awarded to candidates in proportion to the percentage of the vote they received, rather than in a winner-take-all system.

The use of primaries to select presidential candidates is rare outside the United States. In parliamentary systems political parties, of course, choose their leaders in a intra-party vote. In many countries, the selection of the presidential candidate is hand-picked by party leaders or a party directorate. In Brazil, it was outgoing President Ignácio Lula da Silva who picked his top aide Dilma Rousseff to be the candidate of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), the Workers' Party. 

To my knowledge only Argentina, Chile, Colombia, México and South Africa have some sort of presidential primary to choose candidates of the various respective political parties. In each of these cases, a national primary is held on the same day. And only Colombia allows non-party members to vote in the primaries of a political party. The Chilean left, however, has generally held a primary to choose a single candidate from the various parties that form the La Concertación, a grouping that includes Marxist to Christian Democratic parties. In Argentina, only registered Peronists can vote in the Peronist primary just as in México, the PRI primary is limited to members of the PRI. 

The idea of a national primary has been a progressive goal since the Taft Administration and next year will mark the centennial of the first legislative proposal, that of Alabama Congressman Richard Hobson, to hold a national primary. Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson both supported the idea.

It's striking that GOP leaders are hailing this new schedule because it avoids the development of a single national primary. By holding the first contests in smaller, rural and generally some of the more conservative states, they can weed out the more moderate and liberal candidates. Not since 1984 has the most liberal candidate in either party won the nomination. And that is largely due to the outsized influence that Iowa and New Hampshire have. It's not that the winner of these contests necessarily go on to win the nomination but rather that those who fare poorly are forced to drop out before the rest of the country gets to pass judgment.

In the latest sign Bizarro World is the new normal, Center for American Progress Policy Analyst Ian Millhiser took to Think Progress to attack Dr. Howard Dean. The slam on Governor Dean came up during a discussion on Proposition C, a ballot initiative in the battleground state of Missouri against the individual mandate that just passed with over 70% of the vote.

Here's how Millhiser quotes Dr. Dean:

[T]he truth is the mandate’s not essential to the plan anyway. It never was essential to the plan. They did it in Massachusetts and had a mandate, but we have universal health care for kids in my state without a mandate. … I made this prediction before and I’m going to make it again: by the time this thing goes into effect in 2014, I think the mandate will be gone either through the courts or because it’s unpopular.

To make the case against Dean, Millhiser claims that Dean is wrong in that a mandate is essential and that he is wrong that a mandate might be thrown out by the courts. But look at how he quotes Dr. Dean, see those ellipses? Here's what Dean said directly before Millhiser continued his selective quotation:

I thought the President was right in the campaign. Academically, you want a mandate. The American people aren't going to put up with a mandate.

The line Millhiser decided not to quote undermines his entire slam. While "analysts" like Millhiser favor a mandate, the fact is the American people hate the idea of the government forcing them to pay tribute to a private company. Dean acknowledged that to come to his conclusion. Not just on the right, there is no philosophical argument that holds water with the left on how you can have a mandate absent a public option. This is why the left fought against RomneyCare (mandate being the essential feature), the same reason why California progressives fought against the end package in the "Year of Health Care Reform" once AB-8 became AB-1x.

Don't believe me? This was one of the key points of contrast between Obama and Clinton that helped him win the primary.

As was shown in the key state of Missouri just this week, the individual mandate is a 70-30 issue. It is not popular and is a clear political and rhetorical winner for anyone fighting against it, whether from the left or from the right.

Instead of looking at the mandate in the context of pre-existing conditions, it needs to be seen in the context the public option. Without a public option, mandates aren't just hated by the right, but by many on the left too. Since mandates are what made HCR a giant gift to insurance industry profits, a future GOP congress may choose donors over voters, and lay off seizing this great issue. But Dean was right, Obama was right before he was wrong, the individual mandate is disgusting policy.

It would be nice, if CAP is going to go after Dr. Dean, to go after his conclusion, not selectively quote him for straw man wankery.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported its July Employment data.

Total nonfarm payroll employment declined by 131,000 in July, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 9.5 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Federal government employment fell, as 143,000 temporary workers hired for the decennial census completed their work. Private-sector payroll employment edged up by 71,000.

Both the number of unemployed persons, at 14.6 million, and the unemployment rate, at 9.5 percent, were unchanged in July.

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for adult men (9.7 percent), adult women (7.9 percent), teenagers (26.1 percent), whites (8.6 percent), blacks (15.6 percent), and Hispanics (12.1 percent) showed little or no change in July. The jobless rate for Asians was 8.2 percent, not seasonally adjusted.

While the overall unemployment rate remained unchanged, private sector job growth was anemic and fell short of the consensus number of 90,000 jobs forecasted by economists. Furthermore, the 71,000 private sector jobs created fell far short of the 127,000 new jobs required monthly just to keep up with population growth. In short, the US economy is falling farther behind in its capacity to provide employment.

The BLS also dramatically revised its number for June down to a loss of 221,000 jobs. The agency originally reported that 125,000 jobs were lost in June. Private sector hiring in June, originally reported at 83,000, was revised downward to 31,000. The US economy has shed 7.7 million jobs since the recession started in December 2007.

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In an election marred by a computer glitch that prevented several thousand in the Volunteer State from voting, Tennesseans voted in a closely watched GOP gubernatorial primary to see who would earn the right to face Democratic nominee businessman Mike McWherter who was unopposed. Mike McWherter is also the son of former Gov. Ned McWherter

Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam easily won the Republican nomination for Governor Thursday, trouncing his more conservative GOP rivals the secession minded US Rep. Zach Wamp (TN-03), and the Islamophobe Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey from Blountville. Haslam took just over half the vote with Wamp garnering 27 percent and Ramsey 21 percent. The other Republican candidate, Basil Marceaux(.com) of Soddy-Daisy who became an Internet sensation with his bizarre rants about traffic light slavery and guns for everyone, received less than 1 percent of the vote.

Rep. Wamp had generated controversy last month when he seemed to suggest that Tennessee should consider secession in light of the Federal mandates contained in the Democrats' healthcare reform bill. "I hope that the American people will go to the ballot box in 2010 and 2012 so that states are not forced to consider separation from this government," he said. The eight-term congressman later backed away from those comments.

Ramsey, meanwhile, couldn't determine whether Islam was a religion, a nationality, a way of life or a cult before adding that he didn't believe that Islam deserves to be a Constitutionally protected religion. Ramsey also had the support from various Tea Party groups in the state.

Like other GOP primaries this electoral season, Republicans in Tennessee spent most of their time arguing over who the most conservative candidate was. In the end the 'moderate who lurched to the right' won. The race was an expensive one by Tennessee standards. Spending by the top three major Republican candidates hit $14.7 million by the end of July. Haslam, a businessman prior to his six years as Mayor of Knoxville, spent $8.8 million, including more than a million of his own money, more than twice the combined total of his two rivals.

One other wrinkle in this Tennessee election: this was the first election where early voting was allowed. More than 540,000 Tennesseans took advantage and had cast their ballots by August 2.

Phil Bredesen, the popular Democratic governor, is term limited and cannot seek a third term.

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Here are some other news items making the rounds today.

The White House is announcing that Christina D. Romer, the chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, will step down from the post next month. Ms. Romer is to return to California and her post as a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. The move seems more personal than a departure over policy differences. Ms. Romer has a son entering his freshman year of high school. The New York Times has more.

The Hill interviews California Congressman Henry Waxman, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Waxman, looking on the sunny side of the street as the Democrats face an tough electoral environment, believes the November elections will likely weed out some of the “most difficult Democrats” that leadership lawmakers have dealt with this Congress.

A conservative in Colorado asks Gay Marriage, Forgive Me But What is the Problem Here?

Mother Jones has an important article looking at how the Federal housing agencies—and some of the biggest bailed-out banks—are helping shady lawyers make millions by pushing families out of their homes.

Brian Beutler has an update over at Talking Points Memo on the infighting amongst the members of the White House's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Beulter writes that "a source familiar with the proceedings of the working group on discretionary spending tells TPM that some commissioners, including one military contractor, would prefer to save money by freezing military pay and scaling back benefits, rather than by eliminating waste in defense contracting.

The editorial of the day is from the Denver Post. Entitled GOP's Big Tent is a Real Circus, the editorial board writes that the "Republicans are without a credible candidate in the governor's race - but one candidate is even less credible than the other" adding that Dan Maes' "grand bike conspiracy, however, takes the cake. This man must not be governor." Meanwhile Business Week reports that Dan Maes told the Denver Petroleum Club he would cut at least 2,000 workers "just like that" from the state budget, with projected savings of $200 million as well as force a showdown with the Federal government over drilling for gas and oil.