Via CBS News, Mark Stephens, attorney for Wikileaks' Julian Assange, appears on David Frost's al Jazeera TV show and says they've received word a grand jury has been empaneled in Alexandria, VA to investigate criminal charges.

"We have heard from the Swedish authorities there has been a secretly empaneled grand jury in Alexandria...just over the river from Washington DC, next to the Pentagon," Stephens said. "They are currently investigating this, and indeed the Swedes we understand have said that if he comes to Sweden, they will defer their interest in him to the Americans. Now that shows some level of collusion and embarrassment, so it does seem to me what we have here is nothing more than holding charges...so ultimately they can get their mitts on him."

Inmates in at least six prisons have banded together and gone on strike, seeking better compensation and improved prison conditions. They have refused to leave their cells since Thursday.

Chief among the prisoners’ demands is that they be compensated for jailhouse labor. They are also demanding better educational opportunities, nutrition, and access to their families.

“We committed the crime, we’re here for a reason,” said the Hays inmate. “But at the same time we’re men. We can’t be treated like animals.”

How did they coordinate? Through banned cell phones and text messaging. How serious are they? The striking prisoners put gang affiliations and racial issues aside to join together.

Here's New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on "Meet the Press" today, answering a question about how President Obama should deal with an angry liberal base over the tax cut deal:

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: He says, "Look, this is what I did, this is the best I can do. Suck it up, and let's get on together. We have a lot of other things that we can do together."

Bloomberg also categorically rejected the idea of running for President.

Supporters of President Obama get very upset when he is called a "corporatist" Dem or argue that he is triangulating a la Bill Clinton. Last week, Ezra Klein attempted to demonstrate thus it always is for Democratic Presidents - progressives are always disappointed. I agree. But what struck me was Klein's example - Bill Clinton blowup with William Greider in the 1990s:

In the New York Times today, Ishmael Reed writes:

I’ve listened in the last week to progressives criticize President Obama for keeping his cool. Progressives have been urging the president to “man up” in the face of the Republicans. Some want him to be like John Wayne. On horseback. Slapping people left and right. [. . .] If President Obama behaved that way, he’d be dismissed as an angry black militant with a deep hatred of white people.

[. . .] When these progressives refer to themselves as Mr. Obama’s base, all they see is themselves. [. . .] Unlike white progressives, blacks and Latinos are not used to getting it all. They know how it feels to be unemployed and unable to buy your children Christmas presents. They know when not to shout. The president, the coolest man in the room, who worked among the unemployed in Chicago, knows too.

What a bizarre piece. The issue is not about shouting. It is about policy. Some folks don't like the policies the President is espousing. They really don't care if he is the "coolest man in the room." If being the coolest man in the room produced policies and results they agreed with, they would be cheering him. If yelling produced policies and results they disagreed with, they would be upset. If Mr. Reed has something to say in defense of the President's POLICY choices, I would be interested in reading them. Nonsensical pop psychology is not interesting to me.

As I wrote earlier, Dana Milbank defends The Deal as "strategy" by the White House. This has it backwards. It is the Republican strategy that is at at work here- The Grover Norquist strategy. David Dayen writes:

This is the gambit that Republicans have worked for a generation – make taxes so low and deficits so burdensome that pressure builds to slash spending. They claim that tax cuts shouldn’t be counted as part of the deficit but that any spending must be offset or eliminated. It doesn’t have to make sense. Because it’s working.

At this point, Barack Obama's legacy will be the enabling of the GOP's Norquist strategy to demolish the social safety net. The Deal is the first step. President Obama and his team need to start making the point now that The Deal is temporary and that he will veto any attempts to extend the Bush tax cuts beyond 2012.

Speaking for me only

One of the strange conceits of the proponents of The Deal on taxes is that GOP tax cutting somehow ends with The Deal. While making fun of the silly Dana Milbank and his rewriting of the health bill process history, Paul Krugman misses the larger mythmaking - that The Deal ends the tax policy debate. Milbank writes:

The alternative to a deal, administration officials say, was to waste the next few months fighting over taxes [. . .] only to wind up with a deal that likely would be worse with Republicans controlling the House.

Apparently, Milbank and the White House believe that the Republicans will be finished with the tax issue now that The Deal is struck. How utterly idiotic. First, The Deal will be the dominating factor in shaping the budget for the next two years - the GOP will slash the budget. Second, The Deal ends in 2012 which is, if the White House has not noticed, just around the corner. Today, David Axelrod said "we'll have that debate in 2012." That's nice, but who exactly is going to be persuaded? Not Republicans. Even if the Dems win the 2012 elections (and the likelihood is even if Obama wins, the House and the Senate will be Republican after the 2012 election), there will be LESS Dems in Congress than there are today. How exactly is the situation going to change favorably in 2012?

Milbank call this "strategy." I call it idiocy.

Speaking for me only

There were two bombing incidents in Sweden today. One was a car bomb and one was a pipe bomb carried by a suicide bomber. One person was killed -- the suicide bomber.

An email was received by a news agency TT, shortly before the blasts:

The agency said the mail had sound files in both Swedish and Arabic attached. It said the voice on the sound file addressed Sweden and the Swedish people and talked about Sweden's silence over the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed by artist Lars Vilks and Sweden's presence in Afghanistan.

"Our actions will talk for themselves. As long as you do not end your war against Islam and humiliation of the prophet and your stupid support for the pig Vilks," TT quoted the man on the sound file as saying.

There have been several other attacks aimed at Lars Vilks over the last few years. While some think today's bombs in Sweden were the result of a few lone wolves, not an organized terror group, no one really knows yet.

Closer to home, Vilks' cartoons and the Danish newspaper that published them, along with Lashkar e Tayyiba, the terrorist group that allegedly was hatching the plot against the newspaper, will be featured prominently in a U.S terror trial in Chicago beginning in February. It's the case of David Headley, aka Daood Gilani's co-defendant. [More...]

Mark Madoff, Bernie Madoff's son, hanged himself today while his wife was out of town and their two year old son slept in a nearby bedroom.

Today is the second anniversary of the arrest of Bernie Madoff. It was Mark and his brother Andrew who called authorities and turned Bernie in the day after he told them what he had done. No criminal charges had been brought against Mark, although civil lawsuits were plentiful.

How sad. The New York Times has more here and the New York Post here.

Ezra Klein writes:

The story that the White House tells about [The Deal] is this: We have a shaky economy that can't afford a large tax increase. [. . .] Newly empowered Republicans refused to extend the tax cuts for income under $250,000 unless they also got the tax cuts for income over $250,000. [. . . G]iven the choice between letting the cuts expire and potentially harm the recovery and negotiating a compromise which pumps hundreds of billions in extra stimulus into the economy over the next two years, the White House chose the latter.

In 2012, they say, things will be different. [. . .] If you're going to say that the cuts for the rich will definitely be extended, you have to ask [what] the White House is wrong/lying about.

I've not seen the White House say anything publically about tax policy After The Deal at all. The President did not say anything today about it. Therein lies the problem with this vapid analysis from Klein. More . . .

Rather than rehash why I think "The Deal," which appears to be doing for President Obama's popularity what "The Decision" did for LeBron James' popularity, is a terrible mistake (looking through the writings in the blogs on it, my thoughts are in mostly in line with David Dayen's, the President is trading government spending stimulus for tax cut stimulus in the short term (watch the GOP slash spending in the next budget) AND destroying the long term outlook for funding critical government programs such as Medicaid at the same time), I'm going to offer my view of what the President might do to limit the damage of this terrible decision. Greg Sargent gets at a major problem for Obama:

Did I miss anything?

Today being Saturday, a few words about the resignation of Florida football coach Urban Meyer - he had a Leahyesque 5 year run unmatched in recent college football history (2 national championships, 3 BCS bowl game wins, 85% winning percentage in the toughest college football conference.) He was a great, great football coach. That said, he clearly was not at his best last year. It seems that Meyer can only work at full throttle. That leads to burnout. It was time for him to step down.

So who replaces him? I think Florida AD Jeremy Foley will settle on Dan Mullen, the former Gator offensive coordinator and current Mississippi State coach. I think if he could fulfill his own wish list, Oklahoma coach Bobby Stoops would be the next Gator coach. That's who I would want as well. Behind Stoops, I think Jon Gruden would do a tremendous job (but he is hanging out for the right NFL spot). I am also intrigued by Jim Harbaugh. I also think it would be intriguing to see what Kirk Ferentz could do at Florida. He's a great coach. Finally, while I think Boise's Chris Peterson is a great coach, I'm not sure he fits Southern college football. If he finds that Boise is not a big enough stage for him, I suspect he would go to the Pac 10, not the SEC.

Open Thread.