Today’s edition of quick hits.
* AP: “More than 2,000 people crowded Ebenezer Baptist Church on Monday to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s commitment to peace and equality and note the importance of his legacy in this election year. ‘He understood that life is not about self. Life is about service — and service to others,’ said Georgia Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle. Former President Bill Clinton, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin were among those attending the service. King’s birthday is Jan. 15, but the federal holiday bearing his name is observed on the third Monday in January.”
* In 1983, John McCain was one of several Republican senators who voted against creating a holiday to honor Dr. King.
* Rick Perlstein notes the relationship between conservatives and MLK, including controversial comments from Strom Thurmond and Ronald Reagan upon King’s assassination: “What you get now are convoluted and fantastical tributes [from the right] arguing that, properly understood, Martin Luther King was actually one of them — or would have been, had he lived. But, if we are going to have a holiday to honor history, we might as well honor history. We might as well recover the true story. Conservatives — both Democrats and Republicans — hated King’s doctrines. Hating them was one of the litmus tests of conservatism.”
* First, the Heritage Foundation makes silly attacks: “The Heritage Foundation’s ‘blog’ indicts the ‘moral bankruptcy of Talking Points Memo.’ It seems to be a rearguard action expressing some hurt feelings about the right-wing failure to substantiate any of their bogus election fraud charges, which they have used to suppress voter turnout by minority and low-income voters as well as provide fodder for Voter-ID laws and sundry other voter suppression tactics.”
* …and then the Heritage Foundation offers a metaphor for conservative competence: “I am offended that Heritage is slyly using their server reliability as a metaphor for modern conservative governance. Earlier I linked to the main blog to try to give people a working link. But now it seems that your visits have brought down the entire blog section of the Heritage website. Then momentarily the direct link worked. But then it went down again too. If someone from Heritage would be willing to walk a paper copy to TPM headquarters we would be happy to scan it and post it directly on our site.:
* Did Mitt Romney, for no apparent reason at all, really say, “Who let the dogs out?” while campaigning in Florida today? Regretfully, yes.
* An important post from emptywheel: “What follows is an uber-timeline, matching the dates for which OVP and WH don’t have any email archives to the Plame investigation, as well as laying out further details on how the investigation proceeded over time.”
* I guess this was inevitable: “It’s official! The EPA-California greenhouse gas affair has matured into the promised knock-down-drag-out fight it showed promise to become. That’s right, barely a month into it, and we’ve already got an assertion of executive privilege.”
* I’ve lost count of just how many columns Paul Krugman has devoted to criticizing Obama, but he was at it again today. Matt Yglesias and dnA offer retorts.
* AP: “The Los Angeles Times fired its top editor after he rejected a management order to cut $4 million from the newsroom budget, 14 months after his predecessor was also ousted in a budget dispute, the newspaper said Sunday. James O’Shea was fired following a confrontation with Publisher David D. Hiller, the Times reported on its Web site…. The departure also follows that of his predecessor, Dean Baquet, who was forced to resign after he opposed further cuts to the newsroom budget in 2006.”
* Like Kevin, I found this National Review item confusing: “If either McCain or Romney gets the nomination, as unfortunately seems likely, he must choose the single most conservative running mate he can find, who is sane and articulate. Or else Obama becomes President, with a lot of crossover GOP votes.” Conservatives prefer Obama to McCain and Romney? Independents, sure, but conservatives?
* Reader R.K. reminded me of Bob Herbert’s great column from the weekend: “I think of the people running this country as the mad-dashers, a largely confused and inconsistent group lurching ineffectively from one enormous problem to another. They’ve made a hash of a war that never should have been launched. They can’t find bin Laden. They’ve been shocked by the subprime debacle. They’re lost in a maze on health care. Now, like children who have eaten too much sugar, they are frantically trying to figure out how to put a few dollars into the hands of working people to stimulate an enfeebled economy. They should stop, take a deep breath and acknowledge the obvious: the way to put money into the hands of working people is to make sure they have access to good jobs at good wages.”
* And finally, coming eventually to a theater near you: “He’s tackled the assassination of John F. Kennedy and tumultuous presidency of Richard Nixon. Now Hollywood director Oliver Stone is preparing to take an in depth look at how President Bush came to power. According to Daily Variety, Stone is in the process of developing a script about the current president that he hopes will hit theatres in time for the general election next fall. And he’s tapped Josh Brolin — most recently of ‘No Country for Old Men’ to play the commander in chief.” Stone said he wants a “fair, true portrait of the man.”
Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.