Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Roll Call reported this afternoon that Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) regrets his guilty plea, and may yet have an opportunity to reverse his decision: “Under Minnesota law, the Senator could file a motion requesting the withdrawal of the guilty plea. According to University of Minnesota Law School professor Steve Simon, Craig would have to allege ‘a manifest injustice’ in that motion, which he would have to file with the Hennepin County District Court judge who presided over his case. ‘He would have to allege some defect in the plea process,’ Simon said on Tuesday. ‘In other words that there was an inadequate factual basis or that his rights were not explained.'”
* A CBS affiliate in Sacramento re-enacted Craig’s bathroom encounter live, during an on-air broadcast. As frustrated as I get about national news outlets, local news outlets are too often even more cringe-worthy.
* E&P asks a good question: how is it that a senator can get arrested on sex charges, and no one noticed for a couple of months? Roll Call noted it found out based on a tip, but newspaper editors agreed that it was a combination of factors, most notably that Craig was arrested outside his home district in an area where few national outlets have a desk.
* The healthcare crisis is getting worse. The Census Bureau released its new figures for poverty and health insurance this morning: “The number of people without health insurance coverage rose from 44.8 million (15.3 percent) in 2005 to 47 million (15.8 percent) in 2006.” As Jonathan Cohn noted, “Note that the number of people without insurance is growing both as a raw number and as a percentage of the population. In other words, the problem is getting worse — making the case for universal health insurance even more urgent than before.”
* Rep. Brian Baird’s (D-Wash.) decision to go from war critic to surge supporter is costing him dearly among his constituents, who were outraged with their congressman at a townhall meeting last night.
* More and more, I’m starting to understand why conservatives seem less informed. Last night, for example, both Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity presented the news to their (misguided) viewers, and neglected to mention the Alberto Gonzales resignation and the Larry Craig sex scandal.
* AP: “The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world, a report released on Tuesday said.”
* On MSNBC last night, Newsweek chief political correspondent Howard Fineman asserted that “[t]he problem that the Democrats have got, indeed, that all America has got, is that having gone into Iraq the way we did, there is, in the opinion of many fair-minded observers, chaos and hell to pay if we get out overnight.” Note to Fineman: no one’s talking about an overnight withdrawal.
* TP: “On March 12, the Pentagon announced that Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, who oversaw neglect at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, was resigning, effective immediately.” Guess what. He’s still there.
* Chertoff to senators that the Pentagon interrogation methods at Guantanamo were “plain vanilla.” Mark Benjamin explains that Chertoff might have lied.
* Speaking of Chertoff, who’s the leading replacement for Alberto Gonzales? I’ve decided not to mention every rumor I hear — and I heard quite a few today — but Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick run through some of the likely candidates.
* Media Bistro: “Last night on FNC, Hannity & Colmes spoke with Bill Keller, a Christian televangelist known for his harsh criticism of Islam. One problem: in the intro to the story, there was an image of Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times.”
* AP: “A call by Puerto Rico’s governor for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq earned a standing ovation from a conference of more than 4,000 National Guardsmen. Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila said Saturday that the U.S. administration has ‘no new strategy and no signs of success’ and that prolonging the war would needlessly put guardsmen in harm’s way. ‘The war in Iraq has fractured the political will of the United States and the world,’ he said at the opening of the 129th National Guard Association general conference. ‘Clearly, a new war strategy is required and urgently.'” (thanks to LM for the tip)
* And finally, I suspect conservatives won’t want to hear this, but the AP reports that Europe accommodated gay civil unions — more than a half-millennium ago: “Civil unions between male couples existed around 600 years ago in medieval Europe, a historian now says. Historical evidence, including legal documents and gravesites, can be interpreted as supporting the prevalence of homosexual relationships hundreds of years ago, said Allan Tulchin of Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania. If accurate, the results indicate socially sanctioned same-sex unions are nothing new, nor were they taboo in the past.”
Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.