Hosni Mubarak has still not stepped down, but his son, Gamal Mubarak, has resigned his leadership position in Egypt's ruling party.

We're expecting another snowstorm.

What's on your agenda this weekend? This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Open Thread.

“I will change our bankruptcy laws to make it easier for families to stay in their homes,” [Barack] Obama told supporters at a Colorado rally on September 16, 2008, the same day as the bailout of AIG. [. . .] Obama promised to change that, describing it as exactly “the kind of out-of-touch Washington loophole that makes no sense.”

You know about Tim Geithner's disgraceful tenure as head of the New York Fed. You know about Tim Geithner's disgraceful performance on the 2009 stimulus. You know about Geithner on AIG, TARP and HAMP. Now, via Atrios, Pro Publica reports on Geithner's malfeasance on bankruptcy cramdown for primary residences:

The Obama Administration has discovered the secret to dropping the unemployment rate --get people to stop looking for work:

The United States labor market slowed to a crawl in January, adding just 36,000 jobs last month, far below consensus market forecasts. With 13.9 million people still out of work, the unemployment rate actually fell to 9 percent in part because of a readjustment of population figures and also because fewer people looked for jobs during the month.

Happy Days are here again!

Speaking for me only

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak tells Christine Amanpour he won't leave office now.

"If I resign today, there will be chaos," he said. Asked to comment on calls for him to resign, he said: "I don't care what people say about me. Right now I care about my country."

The New York Times reports the Obama Administration is discussing proposals with Egyptian officials for Mubarak to step down now.

More marches are planned for tomorrow. Will he stay or will he go?

Awal Gul, a 48 year old detainee at Guantanamo, has died. The Pentagon says he suffered a heart attack in the shower after exercising on an elliptical machine. Its press release is here.

Gul is the 7th detainee to die at Guantanamo. Five committed suicide (according to the Pentagon) and one died of colon cancer

The Center for Constitutional Rights responds here. His public defenders, W. Matthew Dodge and Brian Mendelsohn, call the press release outrageous. Here's their statement: [More...]

Via Digby:

Anderson Cooper: if your crew is getting beat up in riots in every country you go to-might that suggest UR the 1 doing something wrong?

-Jay Newton-Small [Time magazine reporter]

What's interesting about this is not only that Newton-Small claims to be a journalist, but that her magazine is owned by the same company that owns CNN. I guess solidarity, journalistic or corporate, is not something Newton-Small adheres to.

Open thread.

Joan McCarter covers Claire McCasklil's political gimmickry on the budget (I think it is stupid politics on her part, but who knows?). While Joan details how awful the proposal is on substance, I was struck by the brazen attempt to use a procedure that the Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional. Here's is the plan:

Enforcing Spending Caps[.] If federal spending is projected to exceed the CAP Act designated amount for that year, the OMB is required to sequester funds such that it brings federal spending back to the CAP Act mandated levels. [. . .] This concept is based in part on the sequestration requirements of the current PAYGO law and its predecessor, the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act.

The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act and Emergency Deficit Act was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Bowsher v. Synar. Obviously this proposal is nothing but a political gimmick, with no chance of passage. Similar gimmicks which have been declared unconstitutional like the line item veto are also still trotted out. Is it too much to ask of our pols that they present better thought out gimmicks?

Speaking for me only

Ezra Klein writes:

If the Affordable Care Act isn't as stable as it could be, every state will want the power to modify the plan so it'll work better for them. Some will take advantage of that power by adding an individual mandate. Some will try out various conservative theories of how best to structure the bill. Some, like Vermont, will try to push towards single payer. And those that do nothing will act as a control group to a grand health-care policy experiment -- though not, I think, to the benefit of their residents. [. . .] the practical effect will be of making the legislation very similar to the federalist ideas I mentioned earlier in the week.

There is political merit in this approach. Consider this from The Hill:

Matt Miller:

"Good afternoon, I'm Brian Williams reporting from Washington, where it looks like October 26, 2017, will be a day that truly goes down in history. In a few moments, at a table not far from where I now stand, President Hillary Clinton will sign into law the universal health-care legislation - "Medicare for All," as she calls it - that completes a journey Mrs. Clinton began nearly 25 years ago. [. . .] Who would have thought then - or later, when President Barack Obama's big health reform was overturned by the Supreme Court in a controversial 5 to 4 ruling in 2012 - that today's bipartisan bill would be the result? For some perspective on the twists and turns of history, we're joined by NBC's David Gregory. David, health reform seemed dead in the water in 2012. How did we get from that Supreme Court ruling to today?"

If life were only like this. As DemfromCt says, "Anyone else want what he's smoking?"

Speaking for me only

The Wall Street Journal has ingenuous coverage of the latest jobless claims report:

The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for unemployment benefits dropped sharply last week, reversing the previous week's spike and confirming the gradual improvement in the jobs market. [. . .] Initial jobless claims fell 42,000 to 415,000 in the week ended Jan. 29, the Labor Department said Thursday in its weekly report. The previous week's figures, which were distorted by snow that hit four Southern states, were revised to 457,000 from 454,000.

(Emphasis supplied.) So if the higher number for the previous week was "distorted," how can we know that the employment situation is "gradually improving?" To be sure, the 415k claims number this week is bad under any circumstance. More . . .

A recommended dkos diary asks why Democrats are defending it. Earlier, I asked a similar question.

Yet, I've spent the past few days defending the constitutionality of the mandate. Why am I doing that? Beyond the fact that the mandate is in fact constitutional, I think there is a larger issue at stake - the radical right wing drive to delegitimize and "deconstitutionalize" government action.

Similarly, when Kelo v.New London was decided, the kneejerk "progressive" response was to excoriate the decision. I argued that not only was the decision correct, it was also progressive:

[The dissent] simply has no support in the jurisprudence or in common sense. Indeed, it is the heart of the dangerous jurisprudence of the narrow readings of the civil rights amendments and laws by the Conservative wing of the Court. Always these Conservatives demand "findings" of past institutional discrimination by the state. Always, the Conservatives seek to limit the power of the State to act for the public good. This is more of the same. It is bad stuff. I believe that the Majority properly applied existing jurisprudence in a principled AND properly progressive way.

"First principles" matter. Not everything is sui generis.

Speaking for me only