Barack Obama and Michelle Obama have landed in Great Britain for the G-20 Summit.

They will have tea tomorrow with Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace, for which they received etiquette lessons over the weekend.

The Obamas will also visit France and Germany. I think the British and European press will be the ones to follow this week.

Update: The Guardian has a section answering top questions about the G20, including why Secret Service agents wear sunglasses. Another factoid I didn't know: Air Force One has a gym.[More....]

How could you pick just one Linda Ronstadt song to showcase her incredible talent and career?

Yesterday, she and other performers testified before a Congressional Committee on funding for the arts. Rep. Mike Simpson gave it a royal try: [More...]

Paul Krugman point us to Adam Posen's analysis that Obama/Geithner are following the path of Japan in their Lost Decade. The essence is this:

What the Obama team is proposing is disconcertingly similar to the actions of Japanese Prime Ministers Hashimoti, Obuchi, and Mori in 1995 and 1998: Rather than ask the legislature for straightforward recapitalization money, you have the political leadership preferring to risk overpaying current owners of toxic assets rather than forcing sales. For all of Japan’s supposed intervention in markets, its government still lacked the stomach for taking over banks, let alone closing them.

Nothing we have not heard before. But I think Krugman's postscript is the really interesting part:

Via Atrios, the Geithner Plan to pretend "legacy assets" are not actually, um, toxic, will have to be a long term one:

Home prices in 20 U.S. cities fell 19 percent in January from a year earlier, the fastest drop on record, as demand plummeted and foreclosures rose. . . . A glut of unsold properties may keep prices low, shrinking household wealth and damping spending. Still, sales of new and previously owned homes rose in February, indicating the housing slump, now in its fourth year, may ease as policy efforts to unclog credit and aid borrowers begin to take hold.

“There is still a lot of downward momentum,” said Michelle Meyer, an economist at Barclays Capital Inc. in New York. “We don’t think we’ll see a bottom in home prices until the second half of next year. The decline in home prices will continue to depress household balance sheets.”

It will also depress the value of those "legacy assets" Geithner is so sure are underpriced.

Speaking for me only

What do you suppose the total price tag is for this failed war on drugs? One senior Harvard economist estimates we spend $44 billion a year fighting the war on drugs. He says if they were legal, governments would realize about $33 billion a year in tax revenue. Net swing of $77 billion. Could we use that money today for something else? You bet your a*s we could. Plus the cartels would be out of business. Instantly. Goodbye crime and violence.

[More...]

Jim Manzi writes:

Chrysler may have to play Lehman to GM's Citigroup.

The idea is Chrysler will be allowed to fail like Lehman and GM will be rescued like Citi. Here's my question -- where is the tough talk to Citi?

It will require creditors to recognize that they cannot hold out for the prospect of endless government bailouts. Only then can we ask American taxpayers who have already put up so much of their hard-earned money to once more invest in a revitalized [financial] industry.

When will President Obama say that?

Speaking for me only

Robert Powell, the Dallas police officer who detained Ryan Moats for a minor traffic violation outside a hospital where Moats' mother-in-law was dying, has demonstrated poor judgment before, according to former Dallas Cowboy linebacker Zach Thomas. Powell pulled over Zach's wife Maritza last year for making an illegal U-turn.

Thomas was handcuffed, placed in the back of a police cruiser, spent about three hours in the Dallas County Jail and was threatened with the possibility of spending the night behind bars.

In addition to making an illegal U-turn, Powell said Maritza ran a red light, didn't have her current address on her driver's license, didn't have a registration sticker on her windshield, and couldn't show proof of insurance. Maritza asked Powell to let her mother make the 5 minute trip to her home to retrieve the insurance paperwork, but Powell took Maritza to jail instead. (Maritza's mother, who speaks little English and was visiting Dallas for the first time, "was forced to ride with the tow truck driver when the car was impounded." Welcome to Dallas!) [more...]

Eugene Robinson writes:

Both the credit crunch and the reluctance of consumers to spend what money they have left are the direct result of Wall Street's atrocious misbehavior. Yet the administration's plan for rescuing the banking sector involves generous inducements, big subsidies and the opportunity for wealthy investors to become much wealthier while assuming very little risk. There are reasons for structuring the bank bailout this way, and there are reasons to take a get-tough attitude with the auto companies. But the juxtaposition is galling -- and, for many autoworkers, potentially devastating.

(Emphasis supplied.) What are those reasons? I think the Geithner Plan is going to fail. Surely the reason is not that. I assume they think it is going to succeed. But is it really the only way to accomplish a plan Obama/Geithner think will succeed? Really?

Speaking for me only

The ACLU of Pennsylvania has scored a big win in the "sexting" case in Pennyslvania.

U.S. District Judge James M. Munley granted a request by the American Civil Liberties Union to temporarily stop Mr. Skumanick from filing felony charges against the three Tunkhannock Area School District students.

The ACLU lawsuit argues that the photographs in which the three teen girls appear are not p*rnographic and should be protected under the First Amendment.

The DA wanted to charge the teenage girls as accomplices to the distribution of child p*rnography for taking each other's pictures at a slumber party and then e-mailing the pix around to friends. More here.

How Appealing has the opinion here.

Some people believe there is no correlation between a bad economy and rising crime rates. Others argue that desperate times create desperate people, causing an increase in property and drug crimes. The evidence does not clearly support either position.

Whatever relationship might exist between crime and a tanking economy, it's tempting to conclude (as did "Good Morning America") that the Grandma Bandit -- a woman of about 60 who has robbed four banks in Southern California since last year -- is likely "behind on [her] bills and desperate for the money." Or maybe she's just fed up with ATM service charges and rude tellers.

Olmedo Hildago was one of two men wrongfully convicted in the notorious Palladium night club murder of a bouncer in New York. He served 14 years in prison. There were years of twists and turns and much resistance by DA Morganthau's office before his vindication.

The New York Times reports New York City and State have settled lawsuits with Hildago, who now lives in the Dominican Republic, for $2.6 million.[Hat tip to Blogger Mike.]

The lawsuits of the second defendant, David Lemus, who was retried and acquitted in 1997, are still pending.

The two men had some help establishing their innocence, from unlikely sources: A former prosecutor, a former detective and the jury forewoman.

Here's a suggestion that would help California solve its budget crisis: put San Quentin on eBay (or just list it with a broker).

Offering a prime location and breathtaking scenery, officials think that, even in a down market, the prison's buildings and grounds would fetch as much as $2 billion from private developers.