Is that a fair headline? You be the judge of this:

President Obama Praises Self for Ending War in Iraq on Bloodiest Day of the Year in That Country

Is it bad timing or irrelevant? President Obama’s campaign today released a video praising the president for ending the war in Iraq. It turns out that today has proven to be the deadliest day of the year in that country. [...]

On the other hand, none of the dead appears to be American – which may be all that U.S. voters, and many policymakers, care about.

[Emphasis supplied.]

Ed Kilgore on Thomas Edsall's ridiculous comparison between negative campaigning and voter suppression:

Even if you buy Edsall’s assumption that the Obama campaign’s anti-Romney ads are designed to convince non-college educated white voters who won’t support the incumbent to give Romney a pass as well, it is fundamentally wrong to treat such efforts as equivalent to utilizing the power of government to bar voters from the polls altogether. Voters hypothetically convinced by the Obama ads to “stay home” in the presidential contest are perfectly free to skip that ballot line and vote their preferences for other offices, just as they are perfectly free to ignore both presidential campaigns’ attack ads and make a “hard choice” between two candidates they aren’t crazy about. Lumping negative ads together with voter disenfrancisement under the rubric of “vote suppression” legitimizes the latter as a campaign tactic rather than what it actually is: an assault on the exercise of fundamental democratic rights.

What Ed said.

Aurora shooting suspect James Holmes made his first court appearance today. The full video is above.

Update below: Statement from Arlene Holmes, Jame's mother, about media misconstruing her statement about "having the right person." She was confirming the reporter had reached the right person (her, the mother of James Holmes who lived in Colorado) and not anything about his personality or the shootings, as she didn't know about the shootings when she got the call at 5:45 a.m. Statement below, as read by her attorney:

Neil Barofsky:

In the year since I stepped down as the special inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the sadly predictable consequences of the government’s disparate treatment of Wall Street and Main Street have only become worse. As the banks amass size and power, Main Street continues to get pummeled.

Part of the current economic malaise can be traced directly to Treasury’s betrayal of its promise to use TARP to “preserve homeownership.” The Home Affordable Modification Program has brought little meaningful improvement, with fewer than 800,000 ongoing permanent modifications as of March 31, 2012, a number that is growing at the glacial pace of just 12,000 per month.

What Barofsky said. Tim Geithner is a corrupt incompetent. If Obama loses, Geithner will be one of the main reasons why.

Speaking for me only

Josh Marshall writes:

If you read about how the federal constitution came about, one thing is crystal clear: it was devised by people who wanted to create a strong federal government and saw the states as obstacles to doing so. The people who believed in states rights and an anemic federal government — the ancestors of today’s Tea Party — were the Anti-Federalists. And they lost.

Regular readers know this: see The Republican Party, The Anti-Federalists And The Tea Parties, Taking The Tenth Amendment Seriously, The Tea Party v. Alexander Hamilton, What The Tea Party Believes, What The Founders Believed and David Brooks' Dishonest Invocation of Alexander Hamilton.

Marshall reports on the somewhat more honest GOP attempts to reinstate the Articles of Confederation. Marshall writes:

Quote of the day:

I don't want to retire and leave college football in the hands of the Jackie Sherrills and Barry Switzers. --Joe Paterno

Here's me discussing Penn State - link.

Open Thread.

NCAA hands down severe sanctions to Penn State as a consequence of Sandusky Scandal:

The N.C.A.A. announced significant penalties against Penn State and its football program Monday, including a $60 million fine and a four-year postseason ban, in the wake of the child sexual abuse scandal involving the former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. [...] The punishment also included the loss of 10 scholarships per year for the next four years, with a limit of 65 total scholarship players on the roster, as opposed to the typical 85, by the 2014 season. The university must also vacate all of its victories from 1998 to 2011, meaning that Joe Paterno is no longer the major-college career leader in football wins.

Penn State has consented to the penalty. In addition, current Penn State players can transfer to other schools and play immediately (usually, they would have to wait a year before participating.) Current players can also opt to no longer lay football and retain their scholarships (presumably these would not count against Penn State's scholarship numbers.

I think commentary that Penn State will be crippled for a decade as a result of these sanctions is accurate. There is strong irony in that the late Joe Paterno built the Penn State program and then tore it down by his strongarming of a coverup by the university. Penn State is still under the cloud of the Clery Act, under which Penn State could be liable for up to 27,500 per incident and loss of federal funding (which is around $660 million.) More . . .

Something lighter: It's a big TV night. Breaking Bad, Weeds, the Bachelorette Finale, Big Brother, and the Next Food Network Star.

Our local ABC network has pre-empted the Bachelorette finale for a live prayer vigil in Aurora. NBC and CBS are not pre-empting their shows.

Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

President Obama arrived in Colorado this afternoon to meet with the victims of the Aurora shootings.

Air Force One landed at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colorado, where he is expected to stay for a two-and-a-half-hour visit. He headed straight to the University of Colorado Hospital, one of several area medical centers that received shooting victims.

Obama will not attend a community prayer vigil, which is scheduled in Aurora Sunday night. He will be briefed on the investigation, officials said, and is expected to address the public before he leaves Colorado.

Aurora Police Chief Oates approves:

"These families need that kind of contact by our elected leader," Oates told CBS' "Face the Nation." ''It will be very powerful and it will help them. As awful as what they've been through and what they're going through has been, having the president here is very, very powerful."

[More...]

The New York Times reports the Drug Enforcement Administration will be expanding operations in West Africa, in continued efforts to stop cocaine from going from South America to Africa to Europe.

“We see Africa as the new frontier in terms of counterterrorism and counternarcotics issues,” said Jeffrey P. Breeden, the chief of the D.E.A.’s Europe, Asia and Africa section. “It’s a place that we need to get ahead of — we’re already behind the curve in some ways, and we need to catch up.”

In 2009, the U.S. drug war budget for Africa was $7.5 million. For 2010 and 2011, it was $50 million. Now, for 2013, it seems to be at least $60 million.

At the State Department, Asst. Secy. William Brownfield has been pushing hard for support for the DEA's African adventures, including new initiatives like the five year West African Citizen Security Initiative (WACSI). There's also the West Africa Coast Initiative (WACI). [More...]

Journalist Dave Cullen, author of the definitive book on Columbine which he spent ten years researching, has an op-ed in tomorrow's New York Times on the myths of the mass killer and why people shouldn't rush to judgment about James Holmes.

YOU’VE had 48 hours to reflect on the ghastly shooting in Colorado at a movie theater. You’ve been bombarded with “facts” and opinions about James Holmes’s motives. You have probably expressed your opinion on why he did it. You are probably wrong.

In other words, "The killer is rarely who he seems." I'm ignoring the media's speculating pundits and profilers and will wait for the evidence.

Update: In other case news, Holmes bought his tactical assault gear online from a company called Tactical Gear in Missouri. Here's the receipt. He ordered in on July 2 and specified 2 day shipping. One of the items is a BlackHawk Urban Assault Vest. Here's BlackHawk's website and catalog.

I think it would be more productive to monitor the sale of "urban assault vests" and similar "tactical gear" than guns. What possible sporting use could these items have? Check out the D.O.A.V. Assault Vest System.[More...]

Roundup from a combination of our local news channels:

70 people were shot, 12 have died in last night's shooting at the Aurora, CO movie theater. 10 died at the scene, 2 died in hospitals.

James Holmes is in the Arapahoe County Jail. His first court appearance will be Monday. He stopped talking to cops shortly after his arrest and asked for a lawyer. He will be represented by the public defender.

Holmes passed both an FBI and CBI background check when he bought the guns (he only has a traffic ticket on his record.) The AR 15 is a semi-automatic firearm. It's legal under both federal and Colorado law. (It was subject to the federal assault weapons ban until 2004 when the ban was repealed.) [More....]