The bad economic news continues:

Two months of tentative gains in retail sales slid backward in March, the government reported on Tuesday, signaling more weakness in demand as worried consumers continue to tighten their budgets. The 1.1 percent monthly drop in retail sales displayed the fragility of some recent “glimmers of hope” in the economy cited by President Obama and other policy makers as they press the administration’s economic agenda.

Are some folks are whistling past the graveyard?

Floyd Norris (see also Krugman) on the Goldman Sachs conference call this morning:

7:25 a.m.| A.I.G.: Guy Moszkowski of Merrill Lynch wants to know if they made money from the now-famous government-financed American International Group transactions. The answer is cautious. Most of the impact was in December. For the first quarter, the total A.I.G. effect on earnings was, in round numbers, zero. So what was the A.I.G. effect in December? They did not say. Is it possible the loss then would have been larger without the A.I.G. bailout? We’ll see if any analyst asks.

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Atrios writes:

How many stories will our credulous press write about how big financial institutions are on their knees begging to be allowed to give back all the free money they were given. You know, when they can... maybe... some day! It's absurd.

Six months after accepting a financial lifeline from Washington, a newly profitable Goldman Sachs is pushing to return the billions of taxpayer dollars that it received in an effort to extricate itself from heightened government control.

It is ridiculous. Just give back the money. If you can. If you can't, well, then you are not doing all that well are you? More on the flip.

In the wake of President Obama's announced initiatives on Cuba, I've been reading some commentary that the restrictions on travel to Cuba are unconstitutional. As a general matter, travel restrictions imposed by the Executive and the Congress (see the Helms Burton Act (PDF)) are constitutional. See Zemel v. Rusk and Regan v. Wald. In Regan, the court held:

[A]lthough the ban in question effectively prevented travel to Cuba, and thus diminished the right to gather information about foreign countries, no First Amendment rights of the sort that controlled in Kent and Aptheker were implicated by the across-the-board restriction in Zemel. And the Court found the Fifth Amendment right to travel, standing alone, insufficient to overcome the foreign policy justifications supporting the restriction. . . . We see no reason to differentiate between the travel restrictions imposed by the President in the present case and the passport restrictions imposed by the Secretary of State in Zemel. Both have the practical effect of preventing travel to Cuba by most American citizens, and both are justified by weighty concerns of foreign policy.

Thus, a general ban on travel to Cuba is constitutional. The question now being raised (though it is not new) is whether allowing persons with family in Cuba to travel (and presumably also to send money to relatives) to Cuba violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. I'll discuss that theory on the flip.

James Dobson, in a farewell speech to the Focus on the Family staff, said:

“We are awash in evil and the battle is still to be waged. We are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict. Humanly speaking, we can say we have lost all those battles.”

Whether Dobson is capable of "humanly speaking" is questionable. The man who adamantly opposed the right of women to control their own bodies, of families to make their own end-of-life decisions, of patients to benefit from stem cell research, of gays to enjoy equal rights, and of Harry Potter fans to enjoy their books, is no fan of human rights.

Perhaps the one positive aspect of George Bush's presidency is an unintended consequence: a liberal victory (albeit incomplete) in the culture wars. [more ...]

Jimmy Fennell, a police officer in Georgetown, Texas, responded to a domestic disturbance in October 2007. After he arrived at the scene, he handcuffed an intoxicated woman, drove her to a park, asked her to dance for him, and raped her. Fennell entered a guilty plea to charges of kidnapping and sexual assault and was sentenced to 12 years of incarceration.

This was not Fennell's first incident of sexual misconduct. Evidence uncovered by the rape victim during a civil rights lawsuit revealed Fennell's "wide-spread sexual misconduct while serving as an on-duty police officer." Among other allegations was a complaint that Fennell offered to tear up a woman's traffic ticket if she gave him a lap dance.

Fennell was also suspected of brutally raping and murdering his fiancee, Stacey Stites, in 1996. Evidence revealed by the civil rights suit raises the question whether the man who was convicted and sentenced to death for that crime, Rodney Reed, is actually innocent. [more ...]

Fascinating piece from Bloomberg on the little-understood "stress tests." According to Bloomberg:

"Regulators are using two economic scenarios for the tests. The first is a 'baseline' forecast of 8.4 percent unemployment and 2 percent economic contraction in 2009, followed by 2.1 percent economic growth and an 8.8 percent jobless rate in 2010. The other is a 'more adverse' scenario, with 8.9 percent unemployment and 3.3 percent contraction in 2009, followed by a 10.3 percent jobless rate and 0.5 percent growth in 2010."

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Is anyone besides me watching Dancing With the Stars or "24" tonight? If not, what are you watching?

This is an open thread.

Via Lambert, George Packer writes:

Having already . . . restored the rule of law to America’s treatment of detainees in its custody . . . President Obama, in his tenth week in office, effectively put the government in charge of a large part of the automobile industry. . . . What underlies so many of Obama’s decisions is an attachment to the institutions that hold up American society . . .

(Emphasis supplied.) There is a lot to take issue with in Packer's piece, but the portion I excerpt is simply laughable. "Restored the rule of law to America's treatment of detainees in its custody[?]" What world is Packer living in? "Attachment to our institutions[?]" Not the courts apparently. I can only shake my head.

Speaking for me only

Update: Phil Spector has been convicted of second degree murder . The Judge refused bail pending sentencing. He faces at least 15 years in prison. More here -- and on the rise and fall of Phil Spector here. You can watch the jury verdict here.

As the Guardian puts it, at 68, Spector is likely to die in prison.

Our prior coverage of the trial is here. [More...]

The opinion from the ECC (PDF). Have not read it yet. Just know that it declares Franken the winner. Coleman will appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court. More later.

Rick Hasen's take - "Coleman's Chances on Appeal Appear Quite Small."

Via NORML:

I’d like to highlight the Colorado University chapter of NORML for not only holding the largest organized annual ‘4/20′ event in the world–but for recognizing this year, a year marked so far by an ever-growing voter sentiment about the need to legalize cannabis–that ‘4/20′ provides cannabis law reform advocates a prime annual opportunity to do far more than just protest in the park by convening a day-long, substantive conference in advance of ‘celebrating cannabis’ the next day by exploring logical and effective alternatives to cannabis prohibition.

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