Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Oh my: “Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg, one of the most bearish Wall Street economists, says to look past the 1990-91 recession as a guide to the current downturn. The key difference: the depth of home-price declines…. The mid-1970s recession ‘not only saw a sharp and sustained rise in food and energy prices, as is the case today, but also saw a very similar consumer balance sheet squeeze from a simultaneous deflation in residential real estate and equity assets, which never happened in the 2001 recession, the 1990-91 recession or the recessions of the early 1980s for that matter,’ he writes. ‘The last time we had more than one quarter of outright contraction in the value of both asset classes on the household balance sheet was in the 1973-75 recession.'”
* Bloodshed in Baghdad: “A U.S. military spokesman said three American soldiers were killed in a rocket attack on their combat outpost south of Baghdad on Wednesday. The deaths bring to 12 the number of U.S. troops killed in three days…. Two other American soldiers were injured in the rocket attack. Eight American soldiers died in separate attacks on Monday and one was killed Tuesday.”
* I remember, in 2000, when Bush talked all the time about the importance of a balanced budget: “The Treasury Department says the federal deficit swelled to $263.3 billion in the first five months of this budget year as record spending during the period outpaced record revenues. The department’s latest snapshot of the government’s balance sheets, released Wednesday, shows that the deficit for the budget year that began Oct. 1 was up a whopping 62 percent from the red ink of $162.2 billion for the corresponding five-month period last year. The latest year-to-date budget deficit of $263.3 billion was an all-time high, the government said.”
* A major step on ethics reform: “The House voted Tuesday night to impose a new layer of outside ethics scrutiny on itself after two weeks of open rancor on both sides of the aisle and more than a year of wrangling over the proposal. The final 229 to 182 vote was preceded by plenty of fireworks, despite the comfortable margin. Democratic leaders first had to overcome a procedural hurdle that threatened to kill the measure. They also held the vote open for 15 minutes while leaders pressed several Democratic members to change their no votes to yes.” (Let me just mention, for the record, that I abhor keeping votes open like this.)
* Speaking of the House, lawmakers tried to override Bush’s veto of the intelligence authorization bill (over torture and use of the Army Field Manual in interrogations). It didn’t even come close — Dems came about 60 votes shy of a two-thirds majority.
* When it comes to domestic NSA dragnets, I think the ACLU is onto something.
* What an awful story: “Mehdi Kazemi, a gay Iranian teenager fighting to stay in Europe after his boyfriend was reportedly executed in Iran, has lost a plea for asylum in the Netherlands and will be sent back to Britain, where he could face deportation to Iran, the teen’s uncle told ABC News…. Kazemi, 19, came to Britain to study in 2005. He has said he intended to return to his country until he learned that his boyfriend in Tehran, whom he had been dating secretly since he was 15 years old, had been arrested for sodomy and hanged, according to Kazemi’s lawyer.” Kazemi believes he will be executed upon his return, but a British court denied Kazemi’s request in 2006 on the grounds that Iran does not systematically persecute homosexuals (a conclusion disputed by human rights organizations).
* I’m glad CREW is still on the case: “It’s the burning question of the Bush Administration: malfeasance or incompetence? Did the White House just lose an untold number of emails because of their “primitive” archiving setup? Or is there something worse at play — something criminal? CREW, which has been pursuing a lawsuit over the lost emails, wants to know. And today the group wrote FBI Director Robert Mueller to request that he investigate whether White House officials deleted emails relevant to the Valerie Plame investigation.”
* Keith Olbermann is slated to do another “special comment” tonight, and for the first time, the target of his ire will be a Democrat.
* Really? “Be careful who you frag. Having eliminated all terrorism in the real world, the U.S. intelligence community is working to develop software that will detect violent extremists infiltrating World of Warcraft and other massive multiplayer games, according to a data-mining report from the Director of National Intelligence.”
* What do you know, the EPA’s political leadership has overruled its professional staff again: “The Environmental Protection Agency has decided to lower the allowable amount of smog-forming ozone in the air to 75 parts per billion, a level significantly higher than what the agency’s scientific advisers urged for this key component of unhealthy air pollution, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.”
* And finally, former U.S. attorney Kendall Coffey appeared on CNN yesterday to discuss Eliot Spitzer’s sex scandal. Coffey, of course, is best known for having been forced to resign for “allegedly biting a stripper.” CNN later conceded that Coffey was “probably not the right one for this story.” No, probably not.
Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.