One of them was highly touted Miami, which once again twice performed a one-and-a-half pike bellyflop in front of the home folks in Coral Gables. In a double-elimination regional that seemed tailor-made for a trip to the second round, the Hurricanes instead got clobbered twice, 10-2 by Stony Brook (NY) and 12-2 by Missouri State. Buh-bye.

Other early and unexpected washouts include Texas A&M, SEC champion Mississippi State -- and CUSA champion Rice and Big West champ Cal State Fullerton, two perennial baseball powers with six national titles between them.

(To put that in better perspective, Cal State Fullerton has been in every NCAA tournament since 1978. Further, the Titans have made a phenomenal 16 appearances at the eight-team College World Series in Omaha since 1992, the most of any Div. 1 program over the last 20 years, winning three of them. CSUF is college baseball's equivalent of the Duke Blue Devils in basketball. Suffice to say that falling meekly to Oregon and Austin Peay was not in their forecast this year.)

A real surprise is the MAC champion Kent State Golden Flashes, who upset Kentucky and Purdue on successive days in the Gary Regional to move within one game of advancing to next weekend's Sweet 16 Super-Regionals. The Wildcats and Boilermakers must now face each other in an elimination game, and the winner must beat Kent State twice to advance.

Another one who flew under the radar this year but is flying high now is Dallas Baptist, which is also unbeaten and faces Baylor in the final of the Waco Regional, needing only one win to advance. the 4th ranked Bears, already with one loss this weekend, will need to beat DBU twice.

A third is St. John's in the Chapel Hill Regional, which upset host North Carolina 5-4 last night. They will play each other again this evening. Again, St. John's only needs to win one, while the Tar Heels need to win two.

In 2008, more than 550,000 gave more than $200 to Barack Obama, entering their names in the longest list of individual donors ever seen in American politics.

That list was a snapshot of the hope Obama inspired in a cross sections of liberals, young professionals, African-Americans, and Democrats who saw in him a generational and historic moment. But now, as Obama struggles to keep pace with his 2008 fundraising clip, that list offers a cross-section of Democratic disappointment and alienation. According to a BuzzFeed analysis of campaign finance data, 88% of the people who gave $200 or more in 2008 -- 537,806 people -- have not yet given that sum this year. And this drop-off isn't simply an artifact of timing. A full 87% of the people who gave $200 -- the sum that triggers an itemized report to the Federal Elections Commission -- through April of 2008, 182,078 people, had not contributed by the end of last month.

Interviews with dozens of those drop-off donors reveal the stories of Democrats who still plan to pull the lever for the president, but whose support has gone from fervent to lukewarm, or whose economic circumstances have left them without money to spare. The interviews and the data are the substance of an "enthusiasm gap" spurred by the distance between the promise of the campaign and the reality of governing, one that has begun to deepen Democratic gloom about this November's election.

Not surprising is that W R Hearst had a hand in producing it and shaping the overall story.  Surprising though us that FDR approved of the script and final cut when the film was in production during his transition.

The film takes us back to a time when many in this country, not all on the Right, were calling for dictatorial rule in the US to tackle the economic crisis.  Fortunately, much as he liked the movie, Roosevelt decided wisely not to go dictator, though many felt that opportunity was open to him.

Hearst meanwhile, initially an FDR backer (thx to the lobbying of Joe Kennedy), would soon turn against him and the ND.  Later though, during WW2, he would partly redeem himself on another matter, to his credit.

The time for getting a healthy economy moving is long since passed. (Even ABG has been missing since the payroll numbers came out)

No one has been more critical regarding the Obama/Geithner economic debacle than me, but we are in a Global economy and it is rapidly limiting O's options.

In a few more weeks Europe could implode and then we'll be dealing with a worldwide catastrophe and not just a simple domestic "jobs bill."

He better start acting like a (to borrow another term from the "Godfather")  "Wartime" President, because history tells us we don't like to switch Presidents during a time of war.

Although the story isn't about the ongoing Megaupload New Zealand extradition case, there's an interesting article in today's Seattle Times about efforts to find and extradite a former real-estate magnate who's been on the run for the past year after his highly leveraged empire fell apart.

Apparently the missing developer/scoundrel and his wife possess a collection of diamond rings that's worth millions. It almost sounds like a plot setup from an old episode of It Takes a Thief. And I think that the story makes for a fun read, especially since at this stage no one has had an eye poked out or anything.

The article goes into a lot of detail about the difficulties of extradition for various crimes or illegal activity from different countries around the world.  This passsage seems sort of appropriate to the whole Megaupload case:

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If Mastro has been -- or will be -- indicted, the government's success in extraditing him could hinge on exactly what the charges against him are.

One likely possibility is bankruptcy fraud -- hiding assets from creditors. Rigby filed a civil suit accusing Mastro of that, and Barreca ruled in the trustee's favor last fall.

Experts differ on how easy it would be to extradite Mastro to be tried for that offense.

Some extradition treaties list specific crimes for which other countries will turn over a fugitive American to U.S. authorities. Other treaties are more general, authorizing extradition if the offense with which the American is charged also is a crime in that country.
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And it goes into further details from there.

"House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi kept the "Hillary Clinton for president in 2016" refrain alive in an interview published Sunday.

"Why wouldn't she run? She's a magnificent secretary of state," Pelosi told the San Francisco Chronicle when asked about Clinton's 2016 ambitions. "She's our shot."