The Aurora Police Department has announced there will be no more updates on the Aurora Shootings due to the order entered Monday by Arapahoe County Chief District Judge William Sylvester who is presiding over the James Holmes case.

There were more leaks from law enforcement earlier today, most erroneous. Whatever James Holmes mailed to a professor/psychiatrist at the University of Colorado was sent before the shootings and received Monday. Even reports that Holmes has been spitting on guards are now reported to be false.

Everything in the case has been ordered sealed except the decorum order and denial of expanded media coverage order. [More...]

I will be on Daily Kos Radio. Listen here.

Podcast here.

Open Thread.

Arapahoe County District Court Judge William Sylvester entered this order today denying the media's request for expanded media coverage (audio, video and still photography) for Aurora shooting suspect James Holme's advisement on Monday. The hearing is open to the public and media who want to attend in person. The hearing is to advise Holmes of the charges the DA has filed against him.

A federal law enforcement source has leaked details to the media of the specifics of the explosive devices inside Holmes' apartment: [More...]

I'll be on Daily Kos Radio with Jesse LaGreca at 11 am Eastern. You can listen here.

Here is the podcast:

Open Thread.

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.