You Decide.

An anonymous former Fox News insider claims the network is totally focused on advancing the GOP agenda.

Misleading Microcosm

From CBS's coverage of the brutal assault on its correspondent, Lara Logan:

Sexual harassment of women is an all-too-common occurrence on the streets of Cairo. But many women noted a complete absence of it in the early days of protests in Tahrir Square, where demonstrators made a point of trying to create a microcosm of the society without many of Egypt's social ills.

However, in the final days, and especially after the battles with pro-Mubarak gangs who attacked the protesters in Tahrir, women noticed sexual assault had returned to the square. On the day Mubarak fell, women reported being groped by the rowdy crowds.

So what other all-too-common aspects of Egyptian society did demonstrators make a point of covering up? For instance, when Egyptians aren't groping women in public, they're endorsing murdering them for commiting adultery.

Is It Important To Be In A Fast-Growing Church?

Then see you down at the Kingdom Hall.

The Burden Of The Birthers

Half the Republican Party is confused:

According to [a new] poll, 51 percent of those likely to vote in a GOP primary in the next election cycle adhere to the conspiracy theory suggesting the president was born outside the United States and therefore is ineligible to serve.

Will the 2012 nominee have to cop to this? If so, how will he or she manage to get elected?

More Than A Budget In The Balance

Andrew Sullivan elaborates on yesterday's strenuous outburst against President Obama's proposed budget:

My belief in balanced budgets and living within one's means is deeply entrenched. I attacked my idol Reagan over it; I gushed over Perot on that count (about the only one); I backed Bill Clinton's first, Eisenhower-style budget; I praised the Gingrich-Clinton surplus. But, from the get-go, I went after George W. Bush on fiscal matters and his indifference to deficit spending (unlike most of the Tea Partiers). I went ballistic over Medicare D and unfunded wars. I have been relentless in skepticism toward the Tea Party's alleged fiscal credentials. So why would it in any way be surprising that I would treat Obama the same way? I gave him leeway in the first two years because cutting spending in such a recession would not have helped. In my post yesterday, I support his distinction between investment and mere spending.

But he was elected to provide change we can believe in. In the biggest domestic challenge - America's compounding bankruptcy - he has offered denial and politics.

Sullivan acknowledges that Obama's budget may be the first move in a grand bargain with Republicans that he would work toward in his patient, non-anxious way. His soporific news conference this morning certainly suggested as much. The usual kabuki dance is the president challenging Congress to embrace his vision and Congress and the media proclaiming that it's DOA. But Obama wasn't dancing. He said his budget amounted merely to a guide to the discretionary spending reductions and cuts that he'd find acceptable. If people want more deficit reduction, then they'll have to come from entitlements, defense, and taxes.

If it's true that most Americans have a gathering sense of alarm about the long-time solvency of the United States, then I'd think elected officials will be feeling the heat all across the board. Defense aficionados may come to understand that national bankruptcy would be a national security crisis. The well-off may realize that means testing for Social Security and Medicare won't affect their retirement lifestyle, which in any event will be much more pleasant if the U.S. isn't in default. Progressives may be willing to accept even more of those "mere spending" cuts if it enables them to protect spending that puts people to work, now and in the future. I'd even say (though I don't quite believe it) that anti-tax hawks might come to understand, as their hero Ronald Reagan did in his time, that more revenue must be part of the picture.

Over the next few months, can Obama weave all that together into an historic deficit reduction and long-term investment package? It depends on whether Americans are really paying attention and on how many of their leaders, Obama included, are willing to put their country ahead of their reelection.

Words And The Word

Robyn Henk of St. John's Church:

I’ve been thinking about words lately. I’ve been looking up words like, evangelical, liturgical, orthodox, protestant, emergent… in my Bible. I tried the NLT, NIV, TNIV, NRSV, JB, NKJ, NASV, even The Message – but I couldn’t find any reference to them, let alone any instruction as to which one is the “right way” of practicing our faith.

I did however find a lot of references to the poor, widows, orphans, brokenhearted, captives, lost, oh yes, and “One Body.” I’m beginning to think that maybe were focusing on the wrong words?

Doing Equal Time

With 11 Muslim students facing jail for disrupting a speech by the Israeli ambassador at UC Irvine a year ago, Jewish members of a northern California peace group say they should be prosecuted, too:

"Our own members have engaged in similar protests in the past without being charged, and stand by it as a form of legitimate expression in an open and democratic society," the Oakland-based group said Monday in a news release. "The targeting of a group of Muslim American students, who were already sanctioned and whose organization was already suspended by their university as punishment, is unacceptable and will only strengthen Islamophobia and attempts to stifle political speech in this country."

Haldeman's Wall

Steven E. Levingston on Mary C. Brennan's upcoming book on Pat Nixon:

Chief among her adversaries was chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, who saw it as his job to build a wall around the president, leaving Pat Nixon and many others excluded. When the administration bought a new airplane for the president’s 1972 campaign, Haldeman put the first lady’s compartment at the back. To see her husband, Pat Nixon had to walk through the White House staff offices – until she intervened and had the plane redesigned.

Haldeman annoyed the first lady by inserting himself into staffing and other matters of her East Wing operations. “On more than one occasion,” Brennan writes, “she ‘blasted’ Haldeman for his interference in her domain.”

Palin's Failin'

Politico:

A detailed examination of [Sarah] Palin’s polling in the early going suggests that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the media splash of her late entry into the presidential caucuses and primaries would barely rock the electoral boat. While her endorsement is likely to be a key 2012 prize, pollsters and Republican operatives in the three states repeat the same mantra: Unusual numbers of Republican voters actively dislike her; and among the majority who like her, few think she can serve as president.

Yorba Linda Sky

Morning morning