The Telegraph (UK) is reporting that Osama bin Laden's son, Hamza bin Laden, may have escaped from the compound during the raid at Abbottabad. ABC News reports Hamza is unaccounted for. (More on the Hamza confusion here and here.)

Hamza, who reportedly was living at the compound, along with his mother who is in Pakistani custody, has not been accounted for. Some say he was removed by the commandos along with Osama bin Laden -- with conflicting reports on whether he was dead or alive when captured. [More...]

Newt Gingrich is running for President. Does anyone care? I don't. He's got so much baggage he doesn't have a prayer.

Republicans today blocked the nomination of James Cole as #2 at the Justice Department. The vote is here.

President Obama will stand at the U.S. Mexican border tomorrow, and according to the Washington Post, take credit for "cracking down on illegal immigration."

The president is expected to reel off what his aides say is evidence of an unprecedented focus on border security: hundreds of millions of dollars spent since he took office on high-tech fencing, aerial drones and a doubling of the border patrol since 2004. The result, aides say, has been a steep decline in illegal incursions and plummeting crime rates in U.S. border communities from Texas to California.

How depressing. All of it. Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

India today released its dossiers on the five new defendants in the upcoming federal terror trial of Tahawwur Hussain Rana, charged with conspiracy in the Mumbai bombings and planned attack in Denmark. Rana will be on trial by himself, as none of the others have been arrested. David Headley, aka Daood Giliani, who was originally a defendant, will be the star witness against Rana, having cooperated and pleaded guilty in exchange for avoiding the death penalty and extradition to India or Pakistan.

The dossiers, available here, expose the connections between Lashkar e Tayyiba (leT) and Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). [More...]

Bump and Update: CNN reports a U.S. official has confirmed that the other two wives in the Osama bin Laden compound are, as I have been speculating for a few days, Khairia Saaba otherwise known as Umm Hamzah and Siham Sabar, also known as Umm Khalid. CNN reports a Pakistani intelligence source has told them today that Pakistan will allow the U.S. to interview (interrogate) the wives only if their home countries approve. (Yemen and Saudi Arabia are the home countries.) The AP reports differently, and says Pakistan will allow the U.S. to question the wives.

Original Post: Pakistan to Send Bin Laden's Widow Back to Yemen

The U.S. may not get its wish to interrogate the 29 year old widow of Osama bin Laden, Aml Ahmed Abdul Al-Fatah Al-Sada of Yemen. Pakistan officials say she will be returned to Yemen after they complete their questioning of her.[More...]

Paul Krugman has ignited a debate about whether the catastrophic decade we have lived through (and continue to suffer from) was due to "the Elites" or "the People." Kevin Drum writs:

Who's to blame for our fiscal problems of the past decade? Paul Krugman says elites deserve a lot more of the blame than the general public, but Dan Drezner disagrees: the public, he says, was in favor of tax cuts and in favor of the Iraq war, so they deserve a big chunk of the blame too. [. . .] Despite this broad support, nobody was crying out for either huge tax cuts or invading Iraq until George Bush and the rest of the GOP started talking them up. But the polling evidence is pretty clear that it was far from sufficient. Nothing about public opinion changed in 2001. The only thing that changed was the occupant of the Oval Office.

I want to provide a further example -- in 2009, the public was strongly for taking action against the financial sector. Indeed, the President famously remarked to the bankers ""My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks." And indeed, so the Obama Administration remains, for reasons only Geithner can explain. Apparently on this issue, it's ok to note that Presidents are not powerless bystanders. We were Bush'd. And now we've been HAMP'd. Thanks to the VSPs.

Speaking for me only

Via Kevin Drum, the WSJ reports:

Home values posted the largest decline in the first quarter since late 2008, prompting many economists to push back their estimates of when the housing market will hit a bottom. [...] Prices are decelerating in large part because the many foreclosed properties that often sell at a discount force other sellers to lower their prices. Mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have sold more than 94,000 foreclosed homes during the first quarter, a new high that represented a 23% increase from the previous quarter. More could be on the way: They held another 218,000 properties at the end of March, a 33% increase from a year ago.

(Emphasis supplied.) Tim Geithner has HAMP'd us and he may have "HAMP'd" Obama's reelection.

Speaking for me only

Pakistan Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani addressed the country's Parliament today. He said the unilateral raid on Osama bin Laden's compound was regrettable. Pakistan will conduct an investigation into how Osama hid in Abbottabad for so long. He also said in the future, "any attack on strategic assets would be retaliated with full force."

Gilani said "the US used its technological ability to evade Pakistan’s radar system." He also called for more information sharing, and "an end to the blame game."

He also denied Pakistani ISI was in cahoots with Osama or al Qaeda: [More...]

President Obama is still walking a tight line when it comes to Pakistan's possible role in sheltering Osama bin Laden. On "60 Minutes", taped a few days ago but airing tonight:

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We think that there had to be some sort of support network for bin Laden inside of Pakistan. But we don't know who or what that support network was. We don't know whether there might have been some people inside of government, people outside of government, and that's something that we have to investigate, and more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate. And we've already communicated to them, and they have indicated they have a profound interest in finding out what kinds of support networks bin Laden might have had. But these are questions that we're not going to be able to answer three or four days after the event. It's going to take some time for us to be able to exploit the intelligence that we were able to gather on site.

The full interview, transcript and video, is here.

Writing about the the ignorance of the WaPo Ed Board, Dean Baker writes:

The piece got off to a bad start early, telling readers: "The unemployment rate remains stuck at 9 percent of the workforce, up from 8.8 percent in March. But, good news: The higher rate reflects job-seekers reentering the market because their prospects are better."

Actually, this is not the reason that the unemployment rate increased to 9.0 percent. The Labor Department's household survey showed a 205,000 increase in the number of people categorized as unemployed and a drop of 190,000 in the number of people reported as working. So, almost the whole change from March to April is explained by people going from being employed to unemployed, not new entrants to the labor market.

One basic mistake folks make when discussing the unemployment rate and the monthly jobs information is not knowing that these are two complete different and independent surveys (see David Leonhardt.) You would not know it from general reporting, but the household survey, from whence the unemployment rate is produced, reported a loss of 200k jobs last month (in stark contrast to the establishment survey which reported 268k jobs gained.) Consider Steve Benen:

Wikipedia:

ASA had the lowest rate of on-time performance, and the worst rate of mishandled baggage among all 19 US air carriers reporting to the US Department of Transportation for the full-year 2006.

This won't help:

Two Muslim religious leaders who were removed from a commercial airliner in Memphis say they were told it was because the pilot refused to fly with them aboard.

Masudur Rahman and Mohamed Zaghloul were supposed to travel on an 8:30 a.m. Delta flight, run by a subsidiary, from Memphis, Tenn. to Charlotte. They were traveling to attend a conference of the North American Imam Federation that, ironically, intends to address prejudice against Muslims.

[. . .] ASA released this statement: “Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight 5452 from Memphis to Charlotte returned to the gate to allow for additional screening of a passenger and the passenger's companion. We take security and safety very seriously, and the event is currently under investigation. Compensation and re-accommodation on the next available flight were immediately offered to the passenger and the passenger's travel companion. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused.”

"When I look at the television,
I want to see me staring right back at me
We all want to be big stars,
... when everybody loves me,
I'm going to be just about as happy as I can be"

What is the big deal about Osama bin Laden watching videos of himself on TV? Who cares? Why release them now? Is it to deflect attention from the bungled narrative Administration officials presented all week as to what happened during the raid on the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad? Does the Administratin think they show us something negative we didn't know about Osama?

The Administration should count its blessings that everyone is glad Osama is dead, otherwise it could be in deep doo-doo over this raid and have a lot more explaining to do, particularly over its relationship with Pakistan's military and intelligence agency, which is costing us a fortune. There sure doesn't seem to be much bang for the buck. [More...]

Noam Chomsky does the Noam Chomsky thing (according to Chomsky, bin Laden never stated that he was involved with 9/11) and then Ann Althouse does the Ann Althouse thing:

This is the kind of thing that Barack Obama might have said before he became President. (Or do we only imagine that he used to say things like that?)

(Emphasis supplied.) That would be the "imagining" thing there, Professor Althouse. In fact, Obama promised to do what he did "before he became President." It was actually the Bush Administration that asked for "permission slips" for American military action in Pakistan against Al Qaida.

Speaking for me only