Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Death toll reaches 22,000 in Burma: “Homeless children watched Tuesday as solemn men unceremoniously dropped dead bodies into the river of this southern Myanmar township. The funeral-like procession to the river was one of the many disturbing images of the destruction left by Myanmar’s deadly cyclone.”
* The president speaks out: “President Bush joined a chorus of international leaders urging Myanmar’s reclusive military government to allow the flow of aid after a disastrous weekend cyclone killed tens of thousands of people. ‘Let the United States come and help you,’ Bush exhorted the junta on Tuesday.”
* Speaking of the White House’s reaction to the cyclone disaster, it’s hard to imagine what the First Lady was thinking: “A White House press conference given by First Lady Laura Bush took a bizarre and insensitive twist when the focus of the conference, the devastation wrought by a powerful cyclone in Myanmar, switched to Jenna Bush’s upcoming wedding.”
* Turnout in Indiana and North Carolina appears very high.
* Good: “A House of Representatives committee voted Tuesday to compel vice presidential chief of staff David Addington to testify about controversial interrogation techniques used on terrorism suspects overseas. Democrats want Addington to answer questions about interrogation methods permitted by secret administration memos and criticized as torture.”
* Here’s a phrase Republicans probably don’t want to see in news stories: “McCain appeared confused about where he was for a moment Tuesday.”
* Tragedy renews doubts about MRAPs: “The deaths of two U.S. soldiers in western Baghdad last week have sparked concerns that Iraqi insurgents have developed a new weapon capable of striking what the U.S. military considers its most explosive-resistant vehicle. The soldiers were riding in a Mine Resistant Ambush Protective vehicle, known as an MRAP, when an explosion sent a blast of super-heated metal through the MRAP’s armor and into the vehicle, killing them both.”
* I remember the good ol’ days, when the Clintons liked economists.
* Why don’t Americans love America enough to wear flag-pins?
* Left with no other options, the surge is ending: “A ‘surge’ brigade deployed to Iraq last year is heading back to the United States, the U.S. military said Monday. About 3,500 soldiers from the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team will go back to Fort Benning, Georgia, over the next few weeks. It is the third surge brigade to leave Iraq, as planned, and two more are scheduled to leave by the end of July.”
* On a related note: “Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wants to send 7,000 more U.S. troops — about two brigades — to Afghanistan, according to the May 3 New York Times. But there’s a problem, which the story underplays: We don’t have any more troops to send. The Army is in a zero-sum state: No more soldiers can be sent to Afghanistan without a one-for-one reduction of soldiers in Iraq.”
* The latest on those elusive White House emails: “A White House declaration filed late last night in CREW v. EOP, CREW’s lawsuit challenging the failure of the White House to preserve millions and millions of emails, makes the stunning admission that the White House failed to preserve ANY backup tapes for the period March 1, 2003 through May 22, 2003, a period of time during which the U.S. went to war in Iraq.”
* I guess it’s too late to ask the administration to improve its security protocols: “Hundreds of employee laptops are unaccounted for at the U.S. Department of State, which conducts delicate, often secret, diplomatic relations with foreign countries, an internal audit has found. As many as 400 of the unaccounted for laptops belong to the department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program, according to officials familiar with the findings. The program provides counterterrorism training and equipment, including laptops, to foreign police, intelligence and security forces.”
* Reuters: “[A] black man is 11.8 times more likely than a white man to be sent to prison on drug charges, and a black woman is 4.8 times more likely than a white woman.”
* Bill Kristol likes the “gas-tax holiday” idea. Figures.
* When Jeremiah Wright gets more news coverage than Hillary Clinton, you know the media is in need of some kind of rehab or something. Maybe reporters can start wearing Wright patches and chewing Wright gum, slowly weaning themselves from their Wright addiction.
* I had no idea the new electric car looked cool.
* As political soap operas go, Nevadans are getting quite a show: “Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, a first-term Republican already under pressure because of his handling of the state’s budget crisis, filed Friday for divorce from Dawn Gibbons, his wife of 22 years. On Monday, the governor won a court ruling to have the proceedings sealed under a state law that allows either party in a divorce to do so. Were that all, it might be a blip. But the governor is also seeking a legal ruling — which would certainly become public — to force his wife to move out of the governor’s mansion, where she, and not he, has been living since they officially separated last month.”
Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.