U.K. Home Secretary Teresa May has approved the extradition of 23 year old British student Richard O'Dwyer to the U.S for criminal copyright infringement.

O'Dwyer has never set foot in the U.S., never run a server in the U.S., and didn't host copyrighted material on his website, TV Shack.net. What he did: He ran a website from his basement which included links to sites that had pirated material and his site generated advertising revenue.

His site was shut down as part of ICE's Operation in Our Sites, and the U.S. sought his extradition. In January, a U.K. court ruled he could be extradited to the U.S.. The connection to the U.S. is simply that he bought the domain name (.net) from Verisign, which is in the U.S. [More...]

At the meeting of the UN Commmission on Narcotic Drugs that opened today in Vienna, Bolivian President Evo Morales held up a coca leaf and defended -- to applause -- the right of Bolivians to grow and chew the plant:

Morales said that chewing coca leaves was an "ancestral right" for Bolivians. "We are not drug addicts when we consume the coca leaf. The coca leaf is not cocaine, we have to get rid of this misconception," he said in a speech that ended with applause from the hall.

"This is a millennia-old tradition in Bolivia and we would hope that you will understand that coca leaf producers are not drug dealers."

[More...]

Drudge has Romney leading in both according to the 5 pm exits. That is hard to square with the actual reporting on the exits - 80% evangelical vote:

Around 8 in 10 Mississippians participating in Tuesday's contest were white evangelical or born-again Christians, the largest share measured in any state so far. Those same voters accounted for nearly three-quarters of those surveyed in Alabama, a proportion reached previously only in Tennessee and Oklahoma.

In South Carolina, Newt and Santorum carried 2/3 of the evangelical vote. Assuming an even split, Romney has to carry 2/3 of non- evangelicals to win. Seems far fetched.

Ezra with the rote "there is no bully pulpit" stuff. Drum with a bit more thought. Digby nailing it:

Of course presidents can't really "persuade" people of the opposing party in a polarized environment, for all the reasons Ezra lays out in his piece. But I feel as if this whole argument is about doing something that nobody but President Obama, op-ed writers and some of his more fervent followers ever thought was possible in the first place. They're the only ones who believed that the Republicans were going to fall at his feet and work together in bipartisan harmony --- or that his magical powers of persuasion would create a groundswell of support among Independents and rank and file Republicans.

When progressives called for President Obama to make speeches it wasn't with the goal that he lift his poll numbers or get Mitch McConnell to sign on. Indeed, that's the opposite of what they wanted --- the "Grand Bargains" required to get such a deal are worse than nothing at all from their perspective. The reason they wanted him to make speeches was to mobilize his followers to help "persuade" their representatives to pass progressive legislation --- or even just reaffirm his commitment to shared goals and educate the public about what those goals are. The administration abandoned any notions of doing this shortly after the election[. . . .] But Ezra's piece reaffirms that this is the way major change happens in this environment, so you can't really blame the progressives for pushing it. That's what they wanted --- major change. And in a bit of an ironic surprise, Ezra demonstrated that in this case, the progressives were the pragmatic sorts calling for "what works" --- not the president.

See also my 8 million posts on the PPUS and the "Theory of Change."

Speaking for me only

Back in 2006, then Senator Obama decided to hand out advice to Democrats and liberals on "how to talk about religion". It was a textbook example of triangulation repackaged as the "post partisan unity schtick." It didn't work:

President Obama warned against "using religion as a bludgeon in politics," pushing back against critics who have accused him of waging a "war on religion" through recent policy decisions.

[. . .] "When we start using religion as a bludgeon in politics, we start questioning other people's faith, we start using religion to divide, instead of bring the country together, then I think we've got a problem," Obama told Des Moines's local NBC affiliate, Who TV. [. . .] Obama was responding to recent accusations that he is engaged in a "war on religion" through recent actions such as the contraception mandate.

No magic bullet for Obama on dealing with the Radical Right. It makes his 2006 speech all the more ridiculous now:

Been out of pocket. But back now. I'll find something to write about.

Open Thread.

Swamped here, sorry for the lack of posting today. And I have more than 300 emails to get through before I get back to blogging.

I see there is fear and loathing in Afghanistan.

Kim DotCom says U.S. Government officials, including those from the Department of Justice and U.S. Senate, were among the biggest users of MegaUpload:

I hope we will soon have permission to give them and the rest of our users access to their files," Dotcom told the website.

The lamest season yet of The Bachelor finally ends tonight. There's also The Voice and Smash.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Harry's Law is back from hiatus. There's a new episode of Shameless and The Good Wife.

Bravo launches a new reality show tonight about rich young Iranian-Americans in Los Angeles called "Shahs of Sunset." It's being compared to Jersey Shore and Real Housewives. Whose dumb idea was this? Ryan Seacrest Productions. Who recently acquired a $300 million stake in Seacrest Productions? Clear Channel. Sorry, Ryan, I'm not watching, no matter how many tweets you send out about it.

The stars of “Shahs,” which begins on Sunday on Bravo, are members of the reality tribe, defined not by ethnicity, nationality or religion, but by preening, boastfulness, obsession with appearances, crassness, conformism, thin skin and a tendency to violence.

...The one really unfortunate thing about “Shahs of Sunset” is the way it exploits, and will in turn amplify, a previously localized phenomenon: the longstanding stereotyping of Los Angeles’s Iranian-Americans as vulgar, materialistic show-offs who don’t fit in among the city’s supposedly more cultured elites.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Don’t believe the accounts of HBO's movie Game Change that say the film humanizes Sarah Palin. The story line is exactly the opposite. Sarah Palin, as we all knew, was a desperate Hail Mary Pass by John McCain, completely unvetted and incompetent for the job of Vice President. The film confirms this. It also portrays her as ignorant beyond our wildest imagination and verging on mental illness, veering between bouts of catatonia, manic behavior and paranoia, coupled with having mini-meltdowns.

By all means watch it. Even though it confirms much of what we already knew, it still produces chills. Had McCain, then 72 years old, won the election, this woman would have been next in line to be President. My review is below [More...]

It's Daylight Savings Day. Make sure you change all your clocks.

Here's an open thread for the news of the day, or whatever else is on your mind.

Don't forget to turn your clocks ahead tonight.

Via Mashable, this is the only clock you need.

Is anyone watching Game Change? I'm not sure I'm up for a humanizing take on Sarah Palin. (Update: I watched, and I'm glad I did. My review is here.) The new episode of Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony's Q'Viva: The Chosen might be more pleasant.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Afghanistan sent a delegation to Guantanamo to convince 5 detainees to transfer to Qatar. They agreed.

The five, allegedly Taliban leaders, won't be freed but transferred to less restrictive custody and their families will move there to be with them.

One may be Mullah Norullah Noori. Here's his detainee assessment file. Others who may be among the five: Mullah Khair Khowa (reportedly a former interior minister) and Mullah Fazl Akhund (reportedly a former army commander.)