Christina Romer, chair of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, says:

The overwhelming weight of the evidence is that the current very high—and very disturbing—levels of overall and long-term unemployment are not a separate, structural problem, but largely a cyclical one. It reflects the fact that we are still feeling the effects of the collapse of demand caused by the crisis. Indeed, at one point I had tentatively titled my talk “It’s Aggregate Demand, Stupid”; but my chief of staff suggested that I find something a tad more dignified

Does Deficit Hawk Tim Geithner know? Romer continued:

It doesn’t have to be this way, she argued, essentially making the case for more government stimulus to help the economy. “We have the tools and the knowledge to counteract a shortfall in aggregate demand. We should be continuing to use them aggressively.”

Does anyone else in the Obama Administration agree? See also Brad DeLong and Matt Yglesias.

Speaking for me only

Philippe Gilbert won the Amstel Gold Cup cycling race today.

The NBA playoffs kicked off yesterday and continue pretty much everyday until June.I like the Cavs, Heat, Hawks, Magic, Suns, Lakers, Spurs and Nuggets in the first round. Plenty of time to pick the champion yet.

The Yankees are off to a fast start in the quest for their 28th championship. The Mets stink again.

This is an Open Thread.

On March 19, 2010, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said:

Reid promises public option vote 'in the coming months'

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) promised two Democratic senators this week a Senate vote on the public option "in the coming months." In a letter to Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the top Senate Democrat said he was committed to pursuing the controversial public insurance option later this year. "Like you, I remain committed to pursuing the public option," Reid wrote in a letter dated Thursday, which was obtained and published by the Huffington Post. "As we have discussed, I will work to ensure that we are able to vote on the public option in the coming months."

(Emphasis supplied.) Just sayin'

Didn't see it, but on Meet the Press, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said:

DAVID GREGORY: How viable a political force do you consider the Tea Party to be?

TIMOTHY GEITHNER: [L]et me do the positive side of this. Okay? We've-- just been through eight years where people said-- many people said, ‘Deficits don't matter. We can-- we can pass huge tax cuts, pass huge new programs without paying for them.’ That debate has changed fundamentally. Now you don't hear people say anymore, ‘Deficits don't matter.’ You don't hear people saying that we can pass enormously—enormous expansion of government without paying for it. That's an important change. I think all Americans understand that our deficits are unsustainable. And I think that'll be helpful as we move to try to make the hard choices to bring them down again.”

Economic malfeasance, militia groups and Iceland's volcanic ash seem to be dominating the news. President Obama and several other world leaders canceled plans to attend the funeral of Polish president Leah Kacyznski.

Amanda Knox's lawyers have filed a 220 page brief in her appeal. The case continues to generate attention. DNA evidence seems to be a big issue. The former Blackwater president and four other senior officials have been indicted on weapons and false statement charges.

A federal judge in New York has granted requests by the media to conduct an open sentencing hearing for Cameron Douglas in his heroin case Monday.

Prosecutors in the Roman Polanski case, are still at it. Now they are arguing the victim's wishes can't affect the proceedings.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

With Solicitor General Elena Kagan the likely pick to be the next Supreme Court Justice, I am going to start providing some primary source materials for consideration. Earlier, I discussed Kagan's 2001 law review article on Executive power. I have previously discussed my views on preventive detention. In this post, I provide the transcript of Kagan's testimony in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on her nomination to be Solicitor General. Below the fold, I provide the quotes from her exchange with Senator Lindsey Graham on preventive detention:

Walter Dellinger's piece on Elena Kagan (it reaches similar conclusions to my own piece) raises important questions for progressives regarding a desire for a strong regulatory state while at the same time fearing a strong President. Dellinger writes:

Kagan's 2001 Harvard Law Review article "Presidential Administration[]" [. . .] does not endorse anything remotely like the Bush-Cheney view of broad presidential power to evade laws passed by Congress. [. . .] Kagan's views on the president's power to direct the executive branch are in fact fully consistent with the positions taken by Justice Stevens. [. . .]

As a matter of policy, moreover, Kagan writes that she sees presidential supervision of federal agencies "as a mechanism to achieve progressive goals" in areas such as environmental protection. [. . . ] The Bush-Cheney view of executive power was wrong not because it asserted that the president could direct administrative agencies to achieve policy goals. It was wrong because it allowed for the president to ignore decisions made by Congress and assert unilateral power to violate duly enacted laws. That is a view of presidential power that Kagan expressly rejects. She believes that the president has to comply with the law, writing that, "If Congress, in a particular statute, has stated its intent with respect to presidential involvement, then that is the end of the matter."

(Emphasis supplied.) This was the point I made in my post earlier this week. But Dellinger continues to an equally significant point:

I'm still working, working, working. The TL kid just arrived for dinner, so it will be a few hours before I can check the news or see what everyone's been up to and thinking about today.

Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

DougJ at Balloon Juice, a site I read daily, points us to this bit on what people are reading. For the most part, I no longer read the people they ask "what are you reading?(Brooks, Rich, etc.) I find it all pretty boring.

What do I read? The NYTimes (not the WaPo much at all anymore.) Krugman. Kevin Drum. Yglesias (interestingly not reading Ezra much at all anymore. No particular reason.) Digby. Greenwald every day. Daily Kos every day. A few smaller sites - Docudharma, Corrente, Susie Madrak's site. Booman. Can't remember what else. Not as much reading of political blogs lately.

I do read a lot of sports blogs though (I know, Sports Left is mighty quiet. I've been busy and, well, uninspired.) Among those I like Team Speed Kills (a blog about SEC sports), Alligator Army (about the Mighty Gators sports programs) and especially Podium Cafe, a cycling site. I love Bill Simmons' column at ESPN.

What are you reading these days?

Commenting on the now widely covered SEC civil charge against Goldman (here is the complaint (PDF), Matt Yglesias writes:

The general form of this complaint, that it was wrong for Goldman to make money by betting on the failure of debt-vehicles that in another context Goldman was marketing, has been around for a while. But it’s never been clear to me if there was evidence of actual deliberate fraud, as opposed to something vaguer like an undisclosed conflict of interest.

(Emphasis supplied.) To non-lawyers, non-disclosure of a material fact may not seem like fraud, but under securities laws, it is fraud:

Jose Rodriguez said about his destruction of CIA torture tapes:

The videos showed CIA interrogators using waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique that's widely considered torture, on terrorism suspect Abu Zubaydah. The videos showed that interrogators did not follow the waterboarding procedures authorized by the Bush administration, the documents indicate.

Jose Rodriguez, the agency's top clandestine officer, worried the 92 tapes would be "devastating" to the CIA if they ever surfaced, the documents show. He approved the destruction of the tapes. Rodriguez told Goss and others he "felt it was extremely important to destroy the tapes and that if there was any heat, he would take it," according to a November 2005 e-mail.

The chances of Jose Rodriguez facing any "heat from the Obama Justice Department is zero. A Medal of Freedom is more likely. The only one who needs to worry about heat from the Obama Justice Department is the person who leaked the e-mail to the Washington Post. Change you can believe in.

Speaking for me only

[H]ere you have the Obama DOJ in all its glory: no prosecutions (but rather full-scale immunity extended) for war crimes, torture, and illegal spying. For those crimes, we must Look Forward, Not Backward. But for those poor individuals who courageously blow the whistle on oozing corruption, waste and illegal surveillance by the omnipotent public-private Surveillance State: the full weight of the "justice system" comes crashing down upon them with threats of many years in prison. - Glenn Greenwald

Busy again. Open Thread.

Here is Jeralyn's previous coverage. Let me direct your attention to Glenn Greenwald's coverage (See also John Cole) of the stunning and disgraceful decision by the Obama Department of Justice to prosecute a NSA whistleblower. As Glenn writes, for an Administration dedicated to "looking forward, not backwards," this is stunning, hypocritical and disgraceful.

For all who expressed outrage about the Bush Administration threats to prosecute the NYTimes and whistleblowers, the moral imperative to speak loudly against the Obama Administration is strong.