Here's the White House statement outlining funds in the budget for the War on Drugs. Is there more prevention, alternative incarceration and re-entry funding? Yes. And we appreciate it.

But, it's still top-heavy on enforcement. While it says the DEA gets $24.8 million less this year, it points out that last year's amount included supplemental funding for the Southwest Border. So it probably isn't a decrease at all. And those African vacations keep on coming. Today the feds indicted 7 in Liberia and Romania as part of a reverse sting by DEA agents. (DEA agents posed as drug sellers.)

The men allegedly "agreed to receive and store multi-ton shipments of Taliban-owned heroin" and "sell multi-kilogram quantities of cocaine to the Taliban," while the two Americans -- identified as Alwar Pouryan and Oded Orbach -- allegedly agreed to sell the missiles, the statement said.

The U.S. Attorney's press release is here. Once again, it sounds like the drugs weren't intended for the U.S., but needing jurisdiction, the DEA talked the men into sending some here, with the promise of huge profits. Why are we flying these men from Liberia and Romania to New York to prosecute them? The cost of the prosecution, defense and their incarceration if convicted will be huge. [More...]

The House of Representatives didn't feel any love for our privacy rights today. It passed the bill extending three intrusive privacy provisions of the Patriot Act. The ACLU says:

“It has been nearly a decade since the Patriot Act was passed and our lawmakers still refuse to make any meaningful changes to this reactionary law. The right to privacy from government is a cornerstone of our country’s foundation and Americans must be free from the kind of unwarranted government surveillance that the Patriot Act allows. If Congress cannot take the time to insert the much needed privacy safeguards the Patriot Act needs, it should allow these provisions to expire.”

Anyone else not feeling the love for Congress these days?

Happy Valentine's Day to all our readers. I hope you and your special someone have a very special evening planned. If you do, I hope you'll tell us about it.

If you don't, you can watch Bachelor Brad and the remaining six contestants vie for roses on the beautiful island of Anguilla. It will likely be crazy Michelle's final night. I've always wanted to go to Anguilla so I'm mostly looking forward to the island shots.

If romance isn't your thing, there's always Harry's Law.

Or, you can discuss the budget, or any other topic, your choice.

By the way, what song do you think (and by who) best captures the spirit of Valentine's Day?

Scott Lemeiux finds this "dramatization" of Gibbons v. Ogden:

What is this [Commerce] power? It is the power to regulate, that is, to prescribe the rule by which commerce is to be governed. This power, like all others vested in Congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations other than are prescribed in the Constitution.

Later, a dramatization of McCulloch v. Maryland.

Krugman:

[President Obama] has effectively given up on the idea that the government can do anything to create jobs in a depressed economy. In effect, although without saying so explicitly, the Obama administration has accepted the Republican claim that stimulus failed, and should never be tried again.

What’s extraordinary about all this is that stimulus can’t have failed, because it never happened. Once you take state and local cutbacks into account, there was no surge of government spending. [. . .] Fiscal policy didn’t fail; it wasn’t tried.

Meanwhile, The New Republic tells us how great Tim Geithner is because "Wall Street looks like a patient that staggered off its death bed and promptly took up ultra-marathoning[.]" Yes, that should warm the hearts of Dems and progressives everywhere. Mortgage crisis? Unemployment? Not Geithner's problem. Banks making obscene amounts of money? Job well done Timmeh. Sheesh.

Speaking for me only

Open Thread.

“The debate in Washington is not whether to cut or to spend,” said a senior administration official on Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity to brief reporters on the budget in advance of Mr. Obama’s Monday announcement of the spending plan. “We both agree we should cut. The question is how we cut and what we cut.” - NYTimes

Today Paul Krugman writes that the appropriate slogan for the GOP budget slashing plans is Eating The Future:

Sorry, I've been caught up in the Grammy's. Here's an open thread for other topics.

Lady Gaga arrived in an egg. The Grammys may be worth watching just for her. Update: She was pretty awesome. I loved the choreography.

Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Hudson, Martina McBride, Florence and the Machine (and one other) open with a tribute to Aretha Franklin.

If you're watching, here's a place to share your thoughts.

Your client is charged with a crime considered so awful that the entire country hates him. He becomes the new poster child for "the worst of the worst." How do you gain his trust to be able to provide an effective defense? This new profile of Judy Clarke, defending Jared Loughner, in the New York Times, provides some clues.

Daily Kos has been offline while it migrates to the new DKos 4. The migration is huge, and although it started at 9 am PT, it's still going on. What's taking so long?

Why is it taking so long to import the DK3 db into DK4? 939,000+ stories, 300,000+ registered users and over 40 million comments.

In the meantime, there's a twitter feed with some pretty funny explanations -- it's at #whydkosislate.

Since it will probably go live after I'm asleep, let me just say now, Welcome, DKos 4. Blog readers don't like change, so there will be grumblers, but if you've been following the migration news the past few months, it's evident that a huge amount of thought and planning (and probably cost) went into this new release. I'm hoping its a big success.

Mick Jagger will perform at the Grammy's tomorrow night for the first time. He and Raphael Saadiq will do a tribute to Solomon Burke, who died in October, 2010 at age 70.

The clip above has Burke and the Stones performing together, and also has their comments about him. Here's the Stones performing the same song in 1965.

Also performing tomorrow night: Bob Dylan and Barbara Streisand (not together.)

And of course, there will be Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Katie Perry, Eminem, Jay Z and many more.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.