I'm off to court and BTD is working this afternoon.

Obama's gift to the Queen: An i-Pod. Photos here.

Another good G20 site: TheCity.co.UK. Lots of folks are using Audioboo, a free i-Phone application. The Telegraph has a good page and is using Twitterfall. And, of course, there's Twitter.

The BBC has a live map where you can follow the G20 by exploring London in video, audio, pictures and text. The Guardian's page is here and their hour by hour protest map is here. [Hat tip to Journalism.uk). Jaime Oliver's page with his menu for tonight's dinner is here.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Are any of you quitting today?

How are you going to do it? A spa would be nice. Click through the photos here. Here's another, program here and photos here -- although $1,200. a night for the room on top of the cost of the 14 day program and airfare to the Maldives puts it out of most people's reach. But it does make the tax look cheap by comparison.

Via ScotusBlog:

In the final ruling of the day, the Court, over two Justices’ partial dissents, ruled that a 2005 federal law providing free defense lawyers for individuals facing a possible death sentence allows such a lawyer to seek clemency for the client from state officials. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority in Harbison v. Bell (07-8521). Justice Scalia filed a partial dissent, joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr.

The opinion is here (pdf.)[More...]

The Guardian is providing coverage of the G20 protests on Twitter. In a related article, it reports:

Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink

• Newspaper to be available only on messaging service
• Experts say any story can be told in 140 characters

Happy April Fools' Day. [More...]

A trillion dollars for the Masters of the Universe ain't gonna do squat about this, via Atrios:

Job losses in the U.S. private sector accelerated in March, more than economists' expectations, according to a report by ADP Employer Services Wednesday. Private employers cut jobs by a record 742,000 in March versus a 706,000 revised cut in February that was originally reported at 697,000 jobs, said ADP, which has been carrying out the survey since 2001.

[MORE . . .]

On December 31, three provisions of the Patriot Act are scheduled to sunset. This week, Reps. Jerome Nadler and Jeff Flake introduced reform legislation to curb the excesses of the provision affecting national security letters.

NSLs are secret subpoenas used to demand personal customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit companies without prior court approval.

The ACLU has released a report, Reclaiming Patriotism. On National security letters, it writes: [More...]

The Justice Department has asked a federal court in Alaska to throw out the conviction of former Senator Ted Stevens.

In a statement, Attorney General Eric Holder said he and other Justice lawyers had reviewed the case and "concluded that certain information should have been provided to the defense for use at trial."

"In light of this conclusion, and in consideration of the totality of the circumstances of this particular case, I have determined that it is in the interest of justice to dismiss the indictment and not proceed with a new trial," Holder said.

[More...]

Stiglitz:

THE Obama administration’s $500 billion or more proposal to deal with America’s ailing banks has been described by some in the financial markets as a win-win-win proposal. Actually, it is a win-win-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win — and taxpayers lose.

And it is not even gonna work to "save" the financial industry:

So what is the appeal of a proposal like this? Perhaps it’s the kind of Rube Goldberg device that Wall Street loves — clever, complex and nontransparent, allowing huge transfers of wealth to the financial markets. It has allowed the administration to avoid going back to Congress to ask for the money needed to fix our banks, and it provided a way to avoid nationalization. But we are already suffering from a crisis of confidence. When the high costs of the administration’s plan become apparent, confidence will be eroded further. At that point the task of recreating a vibrant financial sector, and resuscitating the economy, will be even harder.

But Krugman Stiglitz always hated Obama, and a Nobel in Economics does not mean squat and . . .

Speaking for me only

I don't know if Conflicker is a real or over-hyped threat, but I'm not taking chances. I've updated two laptops and a desktop tonight, and now I'm going to back them all up.

Let's hope it's just an April Fool's joke. If not, and it knocks you out, here's CNEt's site with how to get rid of it.

Former Argentinian President Raul Alfonsin, who courageously governed Argentina through one of its most difficult periods, after a disastrous and inhuman military dictatorship (remember the Falklands War, the "Desaparcidos" and the film "La Historia Oficial"), has passed away. He was a great man. NYTimes obit:

Raul Alfonsin, who guided Argentina's return to democracy in the 1980s after seven years of brutal military rule but failed to stave off a deep economic crisis, died Tuesday of lung cancer. He was 82. Alfonsin was president from 1983 to 1989 and won international admiration for putting on trial and jailing the former military leaders who tortured and killed thousands of suspected leftists in a vicious "dirty war." He had been a prominent opponent of the junta that took power in 1976 and his presidency restored respectability to a country regarded as a pariah after decades of coups and often thuggish rule.

RIP, Raul Alfonsin.

American Idol, Dancing With the Stars and Biggest Loser all overlap tonight. If you are watching any of them ... or anything else tonight, here's a place to comment.

Here's the open thread for other topics.

Before I turn my attention to American Idol, DWTS and Slumdog Millionaire (which arrived from Netflix today), there's more news to comment on today:

• Ford and GM are offering to make car payments for buyers who lose their jobs.

• The DEA is sending 80 agents to Afhanistan to fight in the drug war. And Iran wants in on the drug war action in Afghanistan -- it's offering to help fight the Taliban drug lords -- but it doesn't want our military troops there.

• There's movement in the Coleman-Franken Minn. senate race -- it favors Al Franken.

• The House passes a bill tripling the Americorps program. It will go to Pres. Obama for signature when he returns from Europe. The bill is H.R. 1388.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.