Muammar Gaddafi has been killed by fighters in Libya.

[His death] was announced by several officials of the National Transitional Council (NTC) and backed up by a photograph of a bloodied face ringed by familiar, Gaddafi-style curly hair.

"He was killed in an attack by the fighters. There is footage of that," the NTC's information minister, Mahmoud Shammam, told Reuters.

Herman Cain on Feb. 23, 2011 said he would sign federal legislation that protects the sanctity of life

I am a firm believer in the dignity of life and support a ban on partial birth abortion. If I were president, I would sign legislation that would protect the sanctity of life. Additionally, I would be in favor of any legislation that would encourage adoptions as a loving and safe alternative to abortion.

Herman Cain at the Value Voters Summit:

• "I believe in life from conception, no exceptions."

• "I would have asked the Department of Justice to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act"

[More...]

Mediate reports on Herman Cain's statements on abortion rights to CNN's Piers Morgan:

[I]t’s not the government’s role — or anybody else’s role — to make that decision. Secondly, if you look at the statistical incidents, you’re not talking about that big a number. So what I’m saying is, it ultimately gets down to a choice that that family or that mother has to make. Not me as president. Not some politician. Not a bureaucrat. It gets down to that family. And whatever they decide, they decide. I shouldn’t try to tell them what decision to make for such a sensitive decision.

Rick Perry is smiling today.

Kevin Drum points us to this Washington Monthly article that unearths a 1994 clip of Herman Cain questioning President Bill Clinton on the employer mandate proposal in the President's health care proposal. Drum focuses on Cain's SOP of making stuff up and Clinton's political skills:

I was actually struck by Cain's embrace of the concept of predatory pricing, an antitrust concept much derided by conservatives. Cain, then the CEO of Godfather's Pizza, said:

It's time for Survivor, Harry's Law and America's Next Top Model.

Via TMZ, here's Lindsay Lohan's glowing Probation Report. What does the Judge care if she does her service at The Red Cross instead of the program she specified? Time to let up on Lindsay. I doubt she'll go back to jail in November, but the press is already having a field day. Worst headline: "Pack Your Prison Panties, Lindsay, You’re Going Back to the Big House." (By a men's site that claims to love and respect women.)

Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Secure Communities by the Numbers: An Analysis of Demographics and Due Process, a new report the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy of the University of California-Berkley, analyzes data from ICE on the Secure Communities program, received through a FOIA lawsuit and finds numerous problems. Among them:

Approximately 3,600 United States citizens have been arrested by ICE through the Secure
Communities program.

[More...]

Earlier, it was reported that the DEA informant in the Viktor Bout case was paid $1.5 million. Scratch that, it was $8 million and rising. Former Guatemalan soldier and drug dealer turned DEA informant, Carlos Sagastume, testified yesterday in the trial of accused arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Sagastume testified his supplier in Guatemala got busted and Mexican police took him to Mexico, where he was freed after paying a $60,000 "ransom." He then contacted the U.S. embassy offering to be an informant for the DEA. The DEA brought him to the U.S. in 1998 and he's been working as a paid informant for them ever since. He's made over 150 cases and says it's the best paying employment he's ever had.

He testified that he has been paid $1.6 million by the DEA and $7.5 million by the State Department. He said he raked in $250,000 from the Bout case alone, and hopes to earn more money from the case.

[More...]

Kevin Drum continues to project his fear of Rick Santelli on to the rest of us:

[T]he Republican responses are a grim reminder of just how bad the politics of housing are. Voters may say they hate bailing out the banks — and they do! — but they hate bailing out the profligate next-door neighbors even worse. No politician in America seriously wants to risk voter wrath by doing that.

Drum has trotted out this nonsense consistently since Santelli called for "a thousand tea parties." He's been consistently wrong on this throughout. Obama and Dems gain no votes from the Tea Party - who are merely the same right wing Republicans that we all know. This is the type of Third Way/DLC thinking we thought had already been thoroughly discredited. Drum's thoughts lead to the path of Dem defeat - half baked policies like HAMP.

Speaking for me only

Yesterday, Mitt Romney said:

"Don’t try to stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom," Romney said when asked what he would do to jump-start the floundering housing market. "Allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up," he continued. "The Obama administration has slow walked the foreclosure process ... that has long existed and as a result we still have a foreclosure overhang."

(Emphasis supplied.) This is likely a political problem for Romney but it is also wrong as a factual matter. Indeed, Romney notes in his next sentence that HAMP was "inadequate." Obviously the Obama Administration "slow walked" nothing. Apparently, "states rights" federalism is only important to Republicans when they are trying to destroy the social safety net. When federalism interferes with the interests of Wall Street, then it is a bad thing. Consider today's ruling from the highest court in Massachusetts on "the process that has long existed:"

We agree with the judge that the [the plaintiff banks], who were not the original mortgagees, failed to make the required showing that they were the holders of the mortgages at the time of foreclosure. As a result, they did not demonstrate that the foreclosure sales were valid to convey title to the subject properties, and their requests for a declaration of clear title were properly denied.

State rights federalism will seem less important to the GOP on this issue I bet. Also too, so much for adherence to "strict construction" and "the rule of law" from the GOP:

The X-Factor seemed to start off on a bad note when it dropped British judge Cheryl Cole. Replacement judge Nicole Scherzinger didn't seem to me like a good fit during auditions. But now that it's clear the judges' role is not just to vote every week, but to train their assigned group of contestants, I've changed my mind. I can't see Cheryl Cole coaching any of these teams to musical super-stardom. Nicole may be lacking in the magnetic personality department (as she was on DWTS, which she won) but after watching the judges' home segments, I think she'll be a winner as a coach.

It was definitely a struggle to stick with the show through the weeks of auditions. L.A. Reid and Simon were the only reasons I kept watching. For the most part, the contestants were either very physically unappealing or far too young. But in the end, with tonight's selection of the final 17, it was worth it and made for pretty riveting TV.

The X-Factor is not the same as American Idol. To say it's more emotional is an understatement. It's like Queen for a Day on steroids. [More...]

Why is "Gitmo" trending on Twitter right now? Because Herman Cain said on Wolf Blitzer today: If Al Qaeda demanded it, he'd consider releasing every detainee at Guantanamo in exchange for the release of one American soldier.

BLITZER: Could you imagine if you were president…and there were one American soldier who had been held for years and the demand was al Qaeda or some other terrorist group, “You got to free everyone at Guantanamo Bay” – several hundred prisoners at Guantanamo. Could you see yourself as president authorizing that kind of transfer?

CAIN: I could see myself authorizing that kind of transfer but what I would do is I would make sure that I got all of the information. I got all of the input, considered all of the options. And then, the president has to be the president and make a judgment call. I can make that call if I had to. (my emphasis.)

Here's the video.

I have yet to see a Republican debate, nor do I care to. For those who are following, here's a place to discuss it. Tonight's final debate of the series, whatever that means, takes place in Las Vegas.

Who's in it: Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Pizza CEO Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.

It begins at 8 pm ET, airs on CNN, will stream live, and is hosted by Anderson Cooper. Who are their commentators? [More...]