The Commentariat -- May 6

Paul Krugman notes that "Washington looks for trouble in all the wrong places while the unemployed are left to suffer.... Unemployment isn’t just blighting the lives of millions, it’s undermining America’s future.... Yet any action to help the unemployed is vetoed by the fear-mongers." ...

... BUT David Brooks thinks democracy sucks and all of us little people should appreciate the "establishment bigwigs" who will get the federal government back on the right track. ...

     ... Update: I've added a comments page on Off Times Square for Krugman & Brooks & posted my comments. Karen Garcia has also posted hers. You'd probably better read our Brooks comments here, as they are unlikely to make the moderators' cut. Update 2: at 8:00 am ET, it's evident that at best, the Times moderators have decided to bury Garcia's & my comments. It's what they do. AND Valerie Long Tweedie asks a really good question. Update 3: Ah, my comment made the top of Page 2, but no Garcia to be found. Update 4: Plus more truly excellent comments. ...

... AND speaking of Brooks, which is painful for me to do, Driftglass has reimagined Wednesday's "Conversation" between Brooks & Collins in which the two pundits light-heartedly discuss the death photos of Osama bin Laden. Here's a sample graph, which I realize is nearly indistinguishable from the original. (Do read Driftglass's whole post):

David Brooks: Outside of my own children and the little stick figures I invent in my terrible books, I do not accept these 'children' as you call them actually exist. All I see are tiny, tiny Socialists. I will now collect another political product placement paycheck by gratuitously working 'Israel' into our 'conversation.'

Ylan Mui of the Washington Post: "Republican senators vowed Thursday to block any nominee to lead the fledgling Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unless stronger limits are put on its power, in the latest blow in a long-running battle to rein in the watchdog agency before it officially launches this summer." Here's the letter, signed by 44 Senators, to President Obama on the subject. CW: if the Democrats had any sense -- and they don't -- they would make a non-stop talking point of Republicans holding Elizabeth Warren -- or anybody -- hostage in their desperate effort to protect banks from minor oversight of their usual customer-screwing practices. Republicans are basically admitting they support the banks' attempts to snooker you.

Former Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) & Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), in a New York Times op-ed: the Securities & Exchange Commission, "the top cop for our financial markets, remains inexcusably blind to the activities of high-speed computer trading." It has done nothing to prevent another "flash crash" like the one we saw a year ago when "the stock market took a brief and terrifying nose-dive [and] almost a trillion dollars in wealth momentarily vanished."

Neil Irwin of the Washington Post: Treasury Secretary Tim "Geithner will meet Monday with Chinese officials in Washington and try to persuade them to let the value of their currency rise relative to the dollar in part as a way of lifting U.S. trade. That would, by the simple math of foreign exchange markets, weaken the dollar — in pursuit of economic advantage. This contrast reflects a fundamental contradiction in the U.S. approach toward the dollar. The government has put in place a range of policies that make the dollar likely to decline in value over time. But no one in a position of authority can really admit it, because of politics and the possibility of a bad reaction in financial markets." CW: the WashPo headline writer calls this "dollar diplomacy." I call it lying.

David Rogers of Politico: House Republican leaders are in disarray over their Medicare policy, stepping on their own statements, switching positions, & generally confusing their own caucus (CW: many of whom aren't bright enough to negotiate the conflicting messages). ...

... Carl Hulse & Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "House Republicans signaled Thursday that they were backing away from the centerpiece of their budget plan — a proposal to overhaul Medicare — in a decision that underscored both the difficulties and political perils of addressing the nation’s long-term fiscal problems.... Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said that while he still supports the party’s Medicare approach, opposition from Democrats made it pointless to proceed." CW: doesn't he mean opposition from the vast majority of voters?

We’re inept. We are inept and irrelevant.... Too many of our colleagues are afraid of being quote-unquote soft on terror. He [Obama] probably gets even more latitude now.
-- Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah)

David Fahrenthold & Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "... the death of Osama bin Laden has triggered renewed calls from legislators in both parties for the United States to speed up its withdrawal from Afghanistan.But it does not seem to have removed the two political obstacles that have kept these same lawmakers from putting real pressure on the White House in the past. They still lack the support of either party’s leadership. And they still do not have an urgent piece of legislation — a bill central to the war effort — to force a distracted Congress to focus on Afghanistan." ...

... Ben Smith & Byron Tau of Politico: "The cover of The Weekly Standard ... sat awkwardly on newsstands all week ... 'Leading From Behind,' ... dropped by an Obama advisor to a New Yorker reporter last month, had crystallized two years of questions about Obama’s foreign policy into a single slogan. The phrase spread like a virus until late Sunday night, when Obama announced that American commandos had, on his order, killed terror chief Osama bin Laden, resetting American perceptions of the country’s role in the world and of the commander in chief’s capacity for ruthless, dramatic leadership. But for all its inherent drama, the bin Laden shooting did not actually represent a new turn in Obama’s foreign policy. The same president who was — in his critics’ eyes — leaning too hard on the Israelis, pursuing half-measures in Libya and slow to give moral support to the opposition in Iran and Syria simultaneously demonstrated a stomach for high-profile risks by taking out Somali pirates in 2009 and green-lighting the mission in Abbottabad." CW: definitely worthy of a read. ...

... Jonathan Chait of The New Republic comments briefly (& sardonically) on the Weekly Standard cover in a post titled "Annals of Mistimed Propaganda." ...

... Tim Egan: "The operation in Abbottabad was an unqualified success, but the American public still deserves to hear the whole story." ...

... Greg Miller of the Washington Post: "The CIA maintained a safe house in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad for a small team of spies who conducted extensive surveillance over a period of months on the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. Special Operations forces this week, U.S. officials said.... The on-the-ground surveillance work was part of an intelligence-gathering push mobilized after the discovery of the suspicious complex last August that involved virtually every category of collection in the U.S. arsenal, ranging from satellite imagery to eavesdropping efforts aimed at recording voices inside the compound." ...

... Eric Schmitt & Tom Shanker of the New York Times write about a 2007 U.S. raid on a Taliban/Al Qaeda meeting in Afghanistan which intelligence experts thought Osama bin Laden would attend. He didn't. During the raid, which has not been previously reported, commandos killed "several dozen militants."

As we all know, there are numerous other candidates that are looking at it — and thank God. -- Reince Priebus, RNC Chair, on last night's Republican debaters

Pipsqueaks. Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "Five Republican contenders presented themselves here [in Greenville, South Carolina] Thursday evening at the first debate of the 2012 presidential campaign, a televised session that may have only amplified the fretting among some Republican leaders that the party needs to recruit more candidates to find a credible challenger to President Obama." ...

... Here's another report on the debate from Kasie Hunt of Politico.

Gov. Romney’s not here to defend himself, so I’m not going to pick on him. -- Tim Pawlenty, when asked about RomneyCare during last night's candidates debate. CW Translation: I'm really running for Vice President, even though I've denied it numerous times.

Screenshot from the big debate: **

     ** Might possibly be photoshopped.

Andy Borowitz: "A new survey of likely voters indicates that in a hypothetical match-up between former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and billionaire Donald Trump, a majority would choose suicide over either candidate."

Show photo as warning to others seeking America’s destruction. No pussy-footing around, no politicking, no drama;it’s part of the mission – Sarah Palin, tweet

Excellent! Sarah Palin’s message to the President is this: ‘You have to see the entire task through.' – the sort of important political and presidential advice she had to quit her job as governor to be able to tweet. -- Jon Stewart

Sarah Palin said he’s pussy-footing. You know, she would have bin Laden’s head stuffed & hanging in her den. -- Jimmy Kimmel

Karen Garcia: Andrew Breitbart strikes again with a deceptively-edited video, this time at the University of Missouri. Even though the University knew the score, they caved & effectively fired the professor who was "caught on tape" not saying what the tape implied.

More on Diverse Loons. Shannon Travis of CNN: "'Deathers' take over where 'birthers' left off.... A surprisingly diverse crop of people are questioning whether Osama bin Laden is actually dead.... Their claims follow a wide range: Some believe that the world's most-wanted terrorist was not the man killed Sunday, others think bin Laden is dead but was killed many years ago, and still others believe that the September 11 mastermind is alive -- and secretly being interrogated." ...

... Even Speaker Boehner, who coddles birthers, tamps down the deathers:

Right Wing World *

CW: In bipartisan deficit reduction talks yesterday, Republicans demanded there there be no decrease to the deficit. No, really. Read Jonathan Bernstein of the Washington Post, and you'll see what I mean.

Obama is a hardcore socialist. He's scary to me. -- David Koch

Sarah Owen of New York Magazine: David Koch gives President Obama no credit for Osama bin Laden's death:

All that Obama did was say 'yea' or 'nay,' we're going to take him out or not. He just made the decision, it was obvious where the guy is.... I mean, no president in his right mind would not approve that decision to go eliminate him. So he’s getting a lot of recognition and his polls have jumped up, but his decision was the easiest of them all. The real hard work was done by the intelligence and the SEALs.

     ... Sure is heartwarming to see billionaire Koch stand up for the little guys who do the "hard work," isn't it? He'll probably give all his maids & janitors raises tomorrow. Or maybe you think Koch is a small-minded wad of Santorum consumed by hatred & malice.

... As for "the easiest decision of them all," Matt Yglesias points out, "The President’s judgment was that that entailed striking the compound without telling the unreliable Pakistani security services in advance. Both Obama’s predecessor [Bush] and his opponent in the campaign [McCain] said they wouldn’t do that, and if they’d followed through on their word Bin Laden might have gotten away. ...

... Meanwhile, crazy Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) sees the killing of bin Laden as some kind of political distraction that will cause President Obama to "really just exploit the issue for political reasons and not really have the insight to do what’s necessary to protect this country in the future...." Via Marie Diamond of Think Progress.

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

Pierre Thomas of ABC News reports on news of Al Qaeda plots revealed in data attrieved in the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed:

President Obama and Vice President Biden visit the troops in Fort Campbell, Kentucky:

Washington Post: "An online posting attributed to al-Qaeda on Friday confirms the death of Osama bin Laden and warns of retaliation against the United States and other nations for the slaying of the terrorist leader."

New York Times: "Pakistani officials say the Obama administration has demanded the identities of some of their top intelligence operatives as the United States tries to determine whether any of them had contact with Osama bin Laden or his agents in the years before the raid that led to his death early Monday morning in Pakistan."

President Obama spoke at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, this afternoon. NBC News Update: "President Barack Obama on Friday was briefed by members of the team that killed Osama bin Laden, and afterward thanked and awarded them the Presidential Unit Citation, the White House said." With video report. Washington Post story here. New York Times story here.

The Hill: "President Obama called for the elimination of billions of dollars in oil industry tax breaks Friday, while stressing that the United States can’t drill its way out of high gas prices. 'We can’t just drill our way out of the problem,' Obama said during an energy policy speech in Indiana Friday. 'If we’re serious about addressing our energy problems, we’re going to have to do more than drill.'” Video above, under Saturday's Ledes.

Bloomberg: "The U.S. economy added more jobs than forecast in April, easing concern that higher fuel prices are slowing the economic recovery. Payrolls increased by 244,000 workers last month, the biggest gain since May 2010, after a revised 221,000 gain the prior month, the Labor Department said today in Washington. Economists projected an April rise of 185,000, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. Employment excluding government jobs jumped the most in five years. The jobless rate rose to 9 percent, the first increase since November."

Wall Street Journal: "Commodities prices tumbled on Thursday, led by the steepest oil-price decline in more than two years, triggering a selloff in stocks as well. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 139.41 points, or 1.1%, to close at 12584.17, making the Dow's two-day slide its worst in nearly two months. The stock market previously had been mostly spared from the weeklong downturn in raw-materials prices."

AP: "Parts of the Mississippi Delta are beginning to flood, sending white-tail deer and wild pigs swimming to dry land, submerging yacht clubs and closing casino boats, and compelling residents to flee from their homes. The sliver of land in northwest Mississippi, home to hardship and bluesman Muddy Waters, is in the crosshairs of the slowly surging river, just like many other areas along the banks of the big river." ...

     ... Reuters Update: "The rising Mississippi river lapped over downtown Memphis streets on Thursday as a massive wall of water threatened to unleash near record flooding all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Water lapped over Riverside Drive and onto Beale Street in Memphis, and threatened some homes on Mud Island, a community of about 5,000 residents with a river theme park. The island connects to downtown Memphis by a bridge and causeway."

Al Jazeera: "Protesters have taken to the streets across Syria for another day of anti-government protests. Authorities have responded by deploying the military in political sensitive areas, and there were reports of live ammunition being fired in the Damascus suburb of Tel."

AP: "One of three wives living with Osama bin Laden has told Pakistani interrogators she had been staying in the al-Qaida chief's hideout for six years without leaving its upper floors, a Pakistani intelligence official said Friday. The woman, identified as Yemeni-born Amal Ahmed Abdullfattah, and the other two wives of bin Laden are being interrogated in Pakistan...."

Reuters: "Heavily armed Taliban fighters, appearing in a video purporting to show frontline militants in southern Afghanistan, have said the killing of Osama bin Laden will inspire them to continue fighting until all foreign troops have left the country. It was impossible to verify the authenticity of the video, which was obtained by Reuters in southern Afghanistan."

Washington Post: "Lawmakers from both parties opened budget talks with the White House on Thursday with a tacit agreement to focus on areas where they might find common ground that could produce significant savings and to postpone consideration of divisive issues such as higher tax rates and a dramatic overhaul of Medicare."

The Commentariat -- May 5

Why Are We Talking about Torture? Jonathan Bernstein in the Washington Post: "Debating whether torture, years ago, was responsible for the death of Osama bin Laden and therefore vindicated ... requires not only putting together a bunch of tenuous connections to make the positive case but ignoring the much more obvious evidence of the costs of the policy along the way that matter even if that tenuous positive case is true. Or, to put it another way: It’s an easy case to make on faith, but sort of preposterous otherwise." Bernstein thinks conservatives are touting torture because (a) they want to divert attention from praise of President Obama, (b) they want to emphasize as issue that divides the parties,  & (c) they feel the need to "profess their faith" in torture "loudly & often." Thanks to Trish R. for the link. CW: And they definitely want to get their names in the paper.

Gail Collins rips into Indiana's Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels who, while flirting with a run for president, is preparing to sign a bill defunding Planned Parenthood in the state & further curbing abortion rights. Under the bill, which the Republican-led legislature has passed & Daniels has backed, it will be

impossible for Medicaid recipients to make use of the 28 Planned Parenthood clinics in the state and bans abortions for pregnancies that have reached 20 weeks. Also, doctors would be required to tell women seeking abortions that 'medical evidence shows that a fetus can feel pain at or before 20 weeks,' that human life begins when the egg is fertilized and that having an abortion could cause infertility.

     I've added a comments page for Collins' column on Off Times Square & have posted my comment on Collins' column. You can comment on Collins or on any other political or news items.

Adam Entous, et al., of the Wall Street Journal: "U.S. and European intelligence officials increasingly believe active or retired Pakistani military or intelligence officials provided some measure of aid to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, allowing him to stay hidden in a large compound just a mile from an elite military academy.... 'There's no doubt he was protected by some in the ISI...,' a high-level European military official ... said." ...

... Yochi Dreazen, et al., of the National Journal: "The [Obama] administration had made clear to the military’s clandestine Joint Special Operations Command that it wanted bin Laden dead, according to a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the discussions.  A high-ranking military officer briefed on the assault said the SEALs knew their mission was not to take him alive." ...

Vice Admiral William McRaven. Photo via the Washington Post.... Terrorist Hunter. Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post profiles Vice Adm. William McRaven, who oversaw the raid on the bin Laden compound. "He has worked almost exclusively on counterterrorism operations and strategy since 2001, when as a Navy captain he was assigned to the White House shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. The author of a textbook titled 'Spec Ops,' McRaven had long emphasized six key requirements for any successful mission: surprise, speed, security, simplicity, purpose and repetition. For the especially risky bin Laden operation, he insisted on another: precision."

Center on Budget & Policy Priorities: "Testifying before the Senate Finance Committee today [Wednesday] on the limitations on reducing deficits through changes in the budget process, Senior Fellow Paul Van de Water explained that Senator Corker’s proposed federal spending cap would (among other things) make the economy less stable.... Former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alan Blinder made the same point recently.... [The proposal also] fails to account for basic changes in society and government and would force deep cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security...."

The Dumbing-Down of America, Con'd. Sam Dillon of the New York Times: "Fewer than half of American eighth graders knew the purpose of the Bill of Rights on the most recent national civics examination, and only one in 10 demonstrated acceptable knowledge of the checks and balances among the legislative, executive and judicial branches, according to test results released on Wednesday."

Right Wing World *

The Ryan plan doesn't cut Medicare. Actually, it increases funding in it.... The only people in this town that have voted to cut Medicare spending are the people who voted in favor of Obamacare. That's a fact. And so the truth is the people. -- Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), on "Meet the Press"

Paul Krugman: "... now that the [Republican/Ryan] budget has turned out to be both cruel and ludicrous, Republicans have taken to defending it by ... lying about it. Jonathan Cohn catches Marco Rubio declaring that the Ryan plan doesn’t cut Medicare funding — when the Medicare cuts were precisely what supposedly made the plan 'serious'. (We were supposed to focus on that, not on the huge tax cuts or the plan’s reliance on assuming that discretionary spending could be reduced to Calvin Coolidge levels). Here's the Cohn article.

Known and Unknown -- What Will Donald Rumsfeld Say Next? Joan Walsh of Salon: after telling Newsmax on Monday that information that led to finding Osama bin Laden "was not torture and it was not waterboarding," Rumsfeld told Sean Hannity that the CIA got "critically important" information from people the CIA waterboarded." CW: sounds as if after his first remark, somebody told Rumsfeld he should go back to defending torture, as John Yoo, Liz Cheney & other members of the Torture Cult have been doing.

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

President Obama lays a wreath at Ground Zero:

... AND Vice President Biden lays a wreath at the Pentagon:

New York Times: "After reviewing computer files and documents seized at the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed, American intelligence analysts have concluded that the chief of Al Qaeda played a direct role for years in plotting terror attacks from his hide-out in Abbottabad, Pakistan, United States officials said Thursday." The Washington Post story  is here. ABC News story here, with video report.

President & Mrs. Obama hosted a Cinco de Mayo celebration at the White House this evening.

President Obama participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at Ground Zero in New York City earlier this afternoon. Minutes later, Vice President Biden participated in a similar ceremony at the Pentagon. Obama met with 9/11 family members. AP story here. New York Times Update: "... in the wreath ceremony and in a series of meeting across Manhattan on Thursday, the president had a chance to meet one-to-one with the people whose lives were changed most deeply by Bin Laden — relatives of the victims, as well as firefighters and other rescue workers who lost comrades that morning."

Vice President Biden meets with lawmakers from both parties this morning with a goal toward reaching compromise on deficit reduction.

Daily Beast: "The Pakistani Foreign Ministry says it told U.S. intelligence two years ago of suspicions about the compound in Abbottabad where bin Laden was found.

AP: Fake Osama bin Laden death photographs go viral, global. CW: I have heard that some of the main sites that feature these fake photos contain viruses, so before you decide to entertain yourself looking at fake pictures of a dead terrorist, consider the source. ...

... AND They Fooled Republican Senators. Time: Republican Senators have been passing around the fake photos via their cellphones, & at least three -- Kelly Ayotte (New Hampshire), Saxby Chambliss (Georgia) & Scott Brown (Massachusetts) were duped into thinking the photos were real. Brown even boasted about having seen the death photos in an NECN interview & had to issue a retraction.

Washington Post: "... on Wednesday, leaders of the minority parties in the Senate and House introduced their jobs agendas in spirited fashion. Senate Republicans and House Democrats sought to demonstrate that, unlike the parties that control their respective chambers, they are focused chiefly on one of the top concerns of American voters: creating jobs and stimulating economic growth."

Al Jazeera: "The NATO-backed coalition in Libya has said it would create a fund for rebels running short of supplies and money. Italy, host of Thursday's meeting in Rome of the Contact Group on Libya, said the temporary special fund would aim to channel cash to the opposition administration in its eastern Libyan stronghold of Benghazi."

AP: "Claude Stanley Choules..., the last-known combat veteran of World War I..., died in a Western Australia nursing home Thursday at age 110.

The Commentariat -- May 4

Off Times Square is open for comments on Dowd's & Friedman's columns. I've posted my comments. -- CW

... Maureen Dowd concentrates on "the president’s studied cool and unreadable mien" under pressure, but ends by saying we must do something about Pakistan, where elements of the leadership almost certainly were complicit in hiding Osama bin Laden. Yeah? What? ...

... Tom Friedman, in a fairly coherent essay, attempts to show why Osama bin Laden intially succeeded but ultimately failed to capture the hearts & minds of the Arab world. ...

... Obama Ruins Republican Attack Line. New York Times Editors: "... just as releasing a birth certificate marginalized one falsehood, Mr. Obama’s risky and audacious decision to attack the Bin Laden compound in Pakistan has demolished the notion that he cannot make tough decisions or cares primarily about the nation’s image abroad." Read the whole editorial. It's a good summary of various attempts to diminish Obama, all centered on the "he's not one of us" theme. ...

... Last week in a post titled "Liberalism's Bumper Sticker Problem," Jonathan Chait of The New Republic highlighted a segment of Ryan Lizza's New Yorker article (which I've previously linked & is here) on President Obama's foreign policy in which Lizza cited Obama deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes saying, "If you were to boil it all down to a bumper sticker, it’s ‘Wind down these two wars, reëstablish American standing and leadership in the world, and focus on a broader set of priorities, from Asia and the global economy to a nuclear-nonproliferation regime.’ ” Chait remarked, "I'm not sure Rhodes understands what bumper stickers look like," & posted the graphic to the left. ...

... Now, Joshua Green of The Atlantic remarks that "... what's most relevant here is ... that Obama now has a simple rejoinder to the crude attacks on his foreign policy."

We never had direct evidence that he in fact had ever been there or was located there. The reality was that we could have gone in there and not found bin Laden at all. -- Leon Panetta, CIA Director ...

... Greg Miller & Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "... additional details surfaced Tuesday that depict a mission launched amid far greater political and operational uncertainty than had been revealed." ...

... Jim Lehrer of PBS "News Hour" interviews Leon Panetta:, Unlike some of the interviews of Panetta on the major networks, this one is truly riveting:

... Dana Bash of CNN: "CIA Director Leon Panetta told House members Tuesday that any way you look at it, Pakistan's role in Osama bin Laden's whereabouts was troubling. According to two sources in a closed door briefing, Panetta told lawmakers 'either they were involved or incompetent. Neither place is a good place to be.'" ...

... Massimo Calabresi of Time: "... CIA chief Leon Panetta tells Time that U.S. officials feared that Pakistan could have undermined the operation by leaking word to its targets."

Jonathan Allen of Politico: "Osama bin Laden had cash totaling 500 Euros and two telephone numbers sewn into his clothing when he was killed — sure signs that he was prepared to flee his compound at a moment’s notice — top U.S. intelligence officials told members of Congress at a classified briefing in the Capitol Tuesday. A White House spokesman said he would not comment on the matter."

... Steven Myers & Jane Perlez of the New York Times: "Tensions between the American and Pakistani governments intensified sharply on Tuesday as senior Obama administration officials demanded answers to how Osama bin Laden managed to hide in Pakistan, and the Pakistani government issued a defiant statement calling the raid that killed the Al Qaeda leader 'an unauthorized unilateral action.'” ...

... AND Karen DeYoung & Karin Bruillard of the Washington Post: "Obama administration officials here and in Islamabad demanded Tuesday that Pakistan quickly provide answers to specific questions about Osama bin Laden and his years-long residence in a bustling Pakistani city surrounded by military installations. In addition to detailed information about the bin Laden compound — who owned and built the structure and its security system — Pakistani officials were asked in meetings with U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic interlocutors to provide names of witnesses who can testify about visitors to the compound." ...

... Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy: "Pakistani Ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani said that his government will conduct a series of internal investigations to find out how bin Laden could have been living deep less than 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad, and to determine if any Pakistani government personnel were helping him. He also said that the investigations will be conducted solely by Pakistan, without direct U.S. involvement.... Haqqani said, 'We totally reject there was complicity as a policy decision. The only other two explanations are incompetence and overconfidence of our security services.' ... Various Pakistani officials' conflicting statements about what they knew, and when, are complicating Pakistan's diplomatic response to the bin Laden embarrassment."

Following up on Ezra Klein's post, an abbreviated version of which I linked the other day, Stephen Gandel of Time provides a few widely-divergent estimates on what Osama bin Laden cost the U.S.

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos: "The torture crowd has been hard at work the past 24 hours, doing its best to push the idea that it was the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohommed that led to the courier who eventually led U.S. intelligence to Osama bin Laden." Mainstream media outlets have accepted this as a given. Both Marcy Wheeler & New York Times reporters have debunked this myth. (CW: and, I would add, so has Jane Mayer of the New Yorker -- see yesterday's Commentariat.) But, citing a Newsmax "exclusive" (yes, Newsmax!), McCarter notes that the architect of torture -- former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld himself -- says,  

It is true that some information that came from normal interrogation approaches at Guantanamo did lead to information that was beneficial in this instance. But it was not harsh treatment and it was not waterboarding. ...

... AND Scott Shane & Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "As intelligence officials disclosed the trail of evidence that led to the compound in Pakistan where Bin Laden was hiding, a chorus of Bush administration officials claimed vindication for their policy of 'enhanced interrogation techniques' like waterboarding....   But a closer look at prisoner interrogations suggests that the harsh techniques played a small role at most in identifying Bin Laden’s trusted courier and exposing his hide-out." ...

... Massimo Calabresi: Jose Rodriguez, "a former head of counterterrorism at the CIA, who was investigated last year by the Justice Department for the destruction of videos showing senior al-Qaeda officials being interrogated, says that the harsh questioning of terrorism suspects produced the information that eventually led to Osama bin Laden’s death." The White House disagrees.

"Don't Release the Photos." Philip Gourevitch of the New Yorker: "Did we learn nothing from the past decade about the overwhelming power of crude images of violence to define and polarize our historical moment? The Abu Ghraib photographs ... should have taught us that a photograph of the violence you inflict is always, in very large measure, a self-portrait. In getting rid of bin Laden, Obama has made the greatest step yet toward being able to put that era behind us. Do we want a photo of bin Laden’s bullet-punctured skull to eclipse this moment?" ...

AND ... Politically Incorrect. Neely Tucker of the Washington Post: American Indians object to the code name "Geronimo" which was used to identify the bin Laden operation & perhaps bin Laden himself.

Dana Milbank: "President Obama, in the afterglow of his Osama bin Laden triumph, pleaded with congressional leaders at a dinner Monday night to preserve the warm courage of national unity.... Thirteen hours later, Republicans answered Obama’s plea for bonhomie — with broadsides.... House GOP leaders decided against a resolution congratulating the U.S. military...."

... The "Pax Bin Ladenis" Lasted 13 Hours. A New Kind of Republican Fundraiser. New York Times Editors: Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee are preparing to vote for a bill to cripple the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They know the bill will not become law, but they are using the vote as a ploy "to rake in Wall Street donations." The Obama Administration has been ignoring the passage of such House bills. But ... "Unless the administration offers a quick, full-throated defense, the agency may never fulfill its promise. And the process by which Congress is bought and sold — and consumers and taxpayers are hung out to dry — will be, once again, on full display." 

Paul Krugman begins a post on "the falling dollar phobia" like so: "I continue to be amazed by the way Very Serious People find ways to worry about everything except devastating unemployment."

Right Wing World *

Ezra Klein: "As a participant in the great health-care wars of 2010, it’s been — I don’t know: Amusing? Depressing? Annoying? Vindicating? — to watch Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget run over every principle or concern that Republicans considered so life-or-death a mere 400 days ago." Klein provides a partial list of the GOP's 180-degree about-face. (This post is a couple of weeks old, but nothing has changed.)

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

Here's Jay Carney, citing President Obama's explanation to CBS News' Steve Kroft, as to why the government will not release photos of the deceased Osama bin Laden. Clip:

... A link to a brief clip to the President speaking to Kroft is here.

NBC News: "Four of the five people shot to death in the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, including the al-Qaida leader himself, were unarmed and never fired a shot, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday — an account that differs markedly from the Obama administration's original claims that the Navy SEALs came under heavy small-arms fire in a prolonged firefight." ...

... Reuters: "Photographs acquired by Reuters and taken about an hour after the U.S. assault on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan show three dead men lying in pools of blood, but no weapons. The photos, taken by a Pakistani security official who entered the compound after the early morning raid on Monday, show two men dressed in traditional Pakistani garb and one in a t-shirt, with blood streaming from their ears, noses and mouths." The photos are here. CW: They come with a warning, which I heeded. ...

... New York Times: "... new details suggested that the raid, though chaotic and bloody, was extremely one-sided, with a force of more than 20 Navy Seal members quickly dispatching the handful of men protecting Bin Laden. Administration officials said that the only shots fired by those in the compound came at the beginning of the operation, when Bin Laden’s trusted courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, opened fire from behind the door of the guesthouse adjacent to the house where Bin Laden was hiding. After the Seal members shot and killed Mr. Kuwaiti and a woman in the guesthouse, the Americans were never fired upon again."

Washington Post: "Senior Republicans conceded Wednesday that a deal is unlikely on a contentious plan to overhaul Medicare and offered to open budget talks with the White House by focusing on areas where both parties can agree, such as cutting farm subsidies."

Charles, Prince of Wales, & President Obama in the Oval Office. AP photo. Of course, this picture is totally phony. Charles never got near the White House & Obama was out for a round of golf. But, hey, those expert Photoshoppers that Obama put out of work today had to do something. The "AP" in AP photo? That stands for Aaadvanced Photoshop. I'm really sick of conspiracy theories. -- CWPresident Obama met with Charles, Prince of Wales, this afternoon. AP Update: "Prince Charles met with U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday to commend the work that first lady Michelle Obama has done to combat childhood obesity and hunger in the U.S."

McClatchy News: "Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz took the helm of the national Democratic party Wednesday, pledging to 'work every single day' to re-elect President Barack Obama and Democrats up and down the ballot."

President Obama welcomed the Wounded Warrior Project's Soldiers' Ride this afternoon.

In his press briefing, Jay Carney says the President will not release photos of Osama bin Laden's corpse. Here's the AP story. The Washington Post story is here. The CBS News story is here. Update: you can watch a brief clip of the interview here.

New York Times: Prince Charles spoke at Georgetown University this morning about the importance of sustainable agriculture.

New York Times: the U.S.'s finding Osama bin Laden in the heart of Pakistan's military community gives India new reason to distrust Pakistan.

Washington Post: "The Obama administration is beginning another effort to change the nation’s immigration laws, despite little enthusiasm from Republicans in Congress. President Obama met for more than an hour Tuesday with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, his third session on the issue at the White House in the past three weeks. White House aides promised a renewed push to try to persuade Congress and the American public to back Obama’s proposals, which would combine stronger enforcement of current immigration laws with the creation of a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants."

New York Times: "The population of the world, long expected to stabilize just above 9 billion in the middle of the century, will instead keep growing and may hit 10.1 billion by the year 2100, the United Nations projected in a report released Tuesday. Growth in Africa remains so high that the population there could more than triple in this century, rising from today’s one billion to 3.6 billion, the report said — a sobering forecast for a continent already struggling to provide food and water for its people." CW: And Pope Benedict is telling the faithful using contraception is a sin. So did Near-Saint John Paul II in another of his very saintly dogmas.

New York Times: "President Obama invited former President George W. Bush to join him at ground zero in New York City on Thursday to mark the killing of Osama bin Laden, but Mr. Bush declined, a spokesman for the former president confirmed on Tuesday."

CNN: "Residents of the LeDroit Park, a low income area of Washington gathered at the neighborhood farm on Tuesday to meet with ... the Prince of Wales. Prince Charles arrived in the U.S. Tuesday afternoon for a three-day visit that includes stops at the Supreme Court, Georgetown University and the White House."