In an interview with Charlie Rose on PBS Wednesday night, Vice President Joe Biden made the strongest U.S. defense yet of Israel's raid on the aid flotilla, saying that country "has an absolute right to deal with its security interest."

Excerpt:

Joe Biden: I think Israel has an absolute right to deal with its security interest. I put all this back on two things: one, Hamas, and, two, Israel's need to be more generous relative to the Palestinian people who are in trouble in Gaza. Let me explain that very briefly. Sometimes, because we deal so much at least which you know so much about, we have to remember how we got here. Remember, it was Ehud Barak who decided to pull all Iraqi troops — I mean, excuse me, all Iraqi — all Israeli troops out of Gaza. He did that back in '06. Then there was an election, an election for their parliament with a president named Mahmoud Abbas who, in fact, was the successor of Arafat in the Fatah. That produced a majority of members of the parliament, which was the West Bank and Gaza, of Hamas. The international community, the so-called Quartet; the United States, Europe, Russia, and the U.N., said, "Look, in order for you to be part of that government, you have to agree to four conditions. One, you'll abide by previous agreements that have been made by the government of — by the Palestinians. Two, you are going to renounce terror. Three, you're going to recognize Israel, and basically that you have to accept" — and here's what happened.

They then got in a fight among themselves. They physically took over by force of arms, killed members of the existing government, exile them, took over and started firing rockets into Israel. Over 3,000 went in last year. And as we put pressure, and the world put pressure on Israel to let material go into Gaza to help those people who are suffering, the ordinary Palestinians there, what happened? Hamas would confiscate it, put it in a warehouse, sell it, they were — so the problem is this would end tomorrow if Hamas agreed to form a government with the Palestinian Authority on the conditions the international community has set up.

And so I mean again, look, you can argue whether Israel should have dropped people onto that ship or not and the – but the truth of the matter is, Israel has a right to know – they're at war with Hamas – has a right to know whether or not arms are being smuggled in. And up to now, Charlie, what's happened? They've said, "Here you go. You're in the Mediterranean. This ship – if you divert slightly north you can unload it and we'll get the stuff into Gaza." So what's the big deal here? What's the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza? Well, it's legitimate for Israel to say, "I don't know what's on that ship. These guys are dropping eight – 3,000 rockets on my people." Now, the one thing we have to do is not forget the plight of these Palestinians there, not Hamas – they're in bad shape. So we have put as much pressure and as much cajoling on Israel as we can to allow them to get building materials in, glass...

Charlie Rose: That's what they're trying to bring in, building materials.

Biden: Yes, we know that, but they could have easily brought it in here and we'd get it through. And so now the question is what do we do? Well, we had made it clear, the President of the United States has spoken three times, yesterday with Bibi, or the day before yesterday, he's spoken once yesterday with a guy that I have spent a fair amount of time with, with Prime Minister Erdogan in Turkey; the Turks, we passed a resolution in the UN saying we need a transparent and open investigation of what happened. It looks like things are...

Rose: International investigation?

Biden: Well, an investigation run by the Israelis, but we're open to international participation, just like the investigation run on the sunken sub in – off the coast of Korea. That was run by South Korea, but the international community joined in that investigation. And so that is very possible here as well. I might add by the way for all those who say the Israelis, you know, you know, you can't trust them, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled today that every one of the people on those ships had to be released immediately.

Meanwhile, on the night of the attack, Yariv Oppenheimer, director of the Israeli group Peace Now, wrote:

Tonight Israel marked a new low point in the way it chose to contend with its domestic and external policy dissidents. A state that will not let its citizens protest, demonstrate and demand justice, a state that is busy composing loyalty tests for its citizens and passing laws to limit the freedom of expression, failed again in the real test and stopped a protest fleet of civilian ships at the cost of more than ten lives...

It is not the soldiers' fault, nor the commanders' nor the heads of the [IDF]. Israeli society as a whole is responsible for the grim results of the IDF takeover of the protest ships. The radicalization of Israeli society is yielding its fruit. The message to the soldiers and police is crystallizing. When Arabs are involved in an activity, the hand on the trigger is light. Determination boards the ship while sensitivity stays in the water.

But have no fear, the domestic Israeli propaganda machine began to work and in just a few hours every Israeli will be recounting how Hamas helicopters took over a Jewish ship and shot illegal immigrants in all directions. With the use of our repression mechanisms and the encouragement of the IDF spokesman we will again dissociate from reality and the world and manufacture our own unique script in which we are the victims and the whole world is against us as usual. Will the outcome of tonight's confrontation end with an official commission of inquiry? No chance. ...

The price for the unfortunate results of the fleet will be paid primarily by the families of those who were killed at sea last night. Next in line to pay the price will be the residents of Israel who want peace and the end of the conflict with all their hearts, and who wish to stop the cycle of bloodshed and live in a saner country. We, the silent majority, watch with despair as Israel with its own actions justifies the brutal and violent image it acquired in the last years and gives our biggest enemies in Hamas and Iran a reason to rejoice.

Tonight's Rescue Rangers are vcmvo2, Alfonso Nevarez, claude (pulling a double-thanks!), jennyjem and mem from somerville with jennyjem as editor.

The diaries up for rescue tonight are:

• In A Dangerous Crossroads, catchlightning explains why Congress shouldn't have gone on recess while allowing long-term unemployment benefits to expire. The result: a shakier recovery. (vcmvo2)
• janefleming argues for better food inspection laws in Government's Role in Our Food. (vcmvo2)
• citisven makes the case for assessing the gestalt of consumer goods in You can't wipe that spill with a Kleenex®. (mem from somerville)
• Some interesting analysis of the Democratic primary in AL-Gov: It's not about race, except it sort of is from Thomason Tracts. (claude)
• Vtdblue provides more evidence that the justice system is systematically unjust with a newly released Study: Prosecutors Block Blacks From Southern Juries. (Alfonso Nevarez)
• Richard Lyon shows us Globalization, A Pictorial History, to provide a foundation for some future works that he plans. (mem from somerville)
• paradox sure can write, even if it's not a happy-face story: Why Can’t We Spend? (claude)
• In Renewable Energy Round Up, mark louis reports on the latest in solar energy. (vcmvo2)
• Military wife angelajean continues her well-researched and detailed crusade against Glenn Beck, Speaking Fees, and the Purple Heart. (claude)
• An 8th grader writes a Tribute to an inspirational teacher, and rturner229 tells us about it. (Alfonso Nevarez)
• greenferret analyzes the proposed Proposition 14 and comes up with The Top Five Reasons for Californians to Vote No on Top Two Primaries. (jennyjem)
• Yosef 52 is on to something, but you'll be venturing out into the deep waters of The Search: The Existential Dilemma of the Human Being, Part I. (claude)
• AKMuckraker provides some northern exposure of Republican dynamics in Palin Endorses Joe the Candidate - Snubs Murkowski. (mem from somerville)
• xofferson has the last report in a series describing the travails of some NGOs and aid workers in Afghanistan, The world cup of economic and military warfare. (claude)

jotter has yesterday's High Impact Diaries: June 1, 2010.

sardonyx has Top Comments: Pre-Vacation Edition.

If you enjoy Diary Rescue, please consider joining the Rescue Rangers. It's a great way to become more involved with the Daily Kos community. Did we mention it's rewarding and fun? We recently won a Koscar Award for DK Best Community Service for 2009. To volunteer or learn more, please contact us (don't forget to tell us your screen name) at: dkos.rescuerangers@gmail.com

Enjoy and please promote your own favorite diaries in this open thread.

Sarah Palin shrugs off her disastrous endorsement yesterday with a fresh one today. Michigan could be tough for Democrats, but there is a race where it really depends on the candidate. And, if Ras is to be believed, Jack Conway is on a motherfreaking tear in the Bluegrass State.

All this (and more!) in the evening edition (two in one day!) of the ole Wrap...

U.S. SENATE

AK-Sen: Palin wades back into the endorsement pool
Just a day after former half-term Governor and GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin batted .500 on her endorsements (NM-Gov candidate Susana Martinez won, but MS-01 candidate Angela McGlowan was trounced), she is giving a home state candidate some love. Not surprisingly, perhaps, it is the opponent to incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski: Republican Joe Miller. Palin argues in her Facebook post that "Contested primaries are so good for America's political process! Competition makes everyone work harder, be more efficient, debate clearer, and produce more." Someone might want to ask Palin to reconcile that philosophy with her support for Senator McCain in Arizona.

Also, Tom Jensen of PPP wonders aloud if Palin's endorsement is even worth much in her own backyard.

CA-Sen: One candidate leaves the air, and one goes on the air
In a sign of how topsy-turvy the political scene has been this year, within a day of former frontrunner Tom Campbell announcing that his campaign is pulling all television advertising (see this morning's Wrap for details), Democratic challenger (and blogger) Mickey Kaus is debuting his ad. Kaus is the longest of longshots in his effort to deny the Democratic nomination to incumbent Senator Barbara Boxer.

U.S. HOUSE

CA-11: Pombo makes insider pitch in an outsider year
This strikes me as piss-poor framing in a year where Congressional insiders seem to lack a certain popularity. Former Congressman Richard Pombo, who has moved down the road to run for the seat of retiring Republican George Radanovich, is arguing that his pre-existing seniority could make him a power player in the next Congress, giving him a leg up over any other candidates in the field. Somehow, it seems problematic to be reminding voters that he's a Washingtonian. Can't imagine it will help Pombo make up the double-digit polling gap he faced earlier in the year.

NC-08: D'Annunzio implosion continues, cites CT for missing debate
Typically, a refusal to participate in a debate is a tangible sign of strength. This would be...um...the exception to the rule. Controversial GOP candidate Tim D'Annunzio is forgoing a scheduled debate with opponent Harold Johnson. His rationale? One awesome little conspiracy theory. According to D'Annunzio, the media and the Johnson campaign are in cahoots, and the debate will essentially be an ambush against D'Annunzio. This, amazingly, not the first time a candidate has made such a bizarre claim. Just last month, Tennessee Democrat Willie Herenton ducked a debate with incumbent Congressman Steve Cohen on similar grounds.

THE GUBERNATORIAL RACES

FL-Gov: Is son of a Democratic Gov looking at an Indie run?
Things were going so well for the Democrats in Florida. Seemingly certain GOP nominee Bill McCollum got waylaid by a free-spending primary challenger assaulting him from the right, while Democrat Alex Sink was pulling ever closer to McCollum in the polls. This, however, could definitely halt that momentum. Democrat Lawton "Bud" Chiles III, the son of the 90s-era Governor, is now apparently mulling switching from a primary challenge to Sink to an Independent run for Governor. This would almost certainly siphon off enough Dem votes to make it virtually impossible for Sink to win.

ME-Gov: Undecided the big leader even on week of Maine primaries
Maine's voters head to the polls next week for their gubernatorial primaries, but apparently the voters are still weighing their options. According to a new poll from Pan Atlantic SMS Group, a total of 62% of Democrats are still undecided and 47% of Republicans are still undecided. Given the volatility that remains in the race, it is hard to call anybody a "leader" in the race. For what it is worth, Libby Mitchell (13%) leads Steven Rowe (12%) on the Democratic side, while the Republican primary is being led by Les Otten (17%) leads Paul LePage by seven points.

MI-Gov: GOP leads in Michigan, but candidates matter a great deal
If a new poll out this afternoon from PPP is correct, the Republicans start out with a modest lead, generically speaking, in the battle to replace Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm. The identity of the GOP nominee matters a great deal. If the nominee is either Mike Cox or Tom George, then both Democrats (Virg Bernero and Andy Dillon) are extremely competitive. If the nominee is either Peter Hoekstra or Mike Bouchard, then the Democrats trail by a margin just above the margin of error. The biggest concern for Democrats should be a Rick Snyder nomination. Snyder leads Bernero by sixteen (44-28) and Dillon by twenty (46-26).

NY-Gov: ...And then there were two in GOP gubernatorial battle
In one day, the Republican field in New York was cut in half, as two candidates were eliminated from the field at the NY GOP Convention. The party denied party-switcher Steve Levy a slot on the ballot (a slot on the ballot required majority support of the convention, because of his status as a registered Democrat). Levy came close (43-57), but there will be no cigar (nor a ballot line) for the Suffolk County Executive, who actually came in second in the earlier straw vote of the race (28%). Later in the day, newcomer W. Myers Mermel also dropped out, literally days after RGA head Haley Barbour welcomed him into the race. Mermel walked after getting just 4% support at the convention. This puts former Congressman Rick Lazio right in the drivers seat, having earned 60% of the convention vote. Only businessman Carl Paladino (who got 8% of the convention vote) remains in his path.

THE RAS-A-POLL-OOZA

Only one campaign poll from the House of Ras today, but whoa boy...is it a beauty.

Take your pick, Rasmussen. Either Jack Conway is a freaking juggernaut, who has picked up 17 net points of support in less than two weeks, or your first poll in Kentucky was completely full of it. You choose.

KY-Sen: Rand Paul (R) 49%, Jack Conway (D) 41%

Judiciary Committee ranking member Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III says that there's just no way to be prepared to have Kagan's confirmation hearings start on June 28. The reason? There's just too much information to have to read through, since the Clinton Library archivists are releasing more than 160,000 pages of records that Sessions said were critical to the confirmation.

Media Matters checked their own archives, and found this:

Sessions, however, was singing a much different tune when President Bush nominated Justice Alito to the court in October 2005 and Republicans wanted to confirm him as quickly as possible. "My personal view is, let's finish it this year; let's not have it hanging out there," Sessions said. "You don't have to read everything he's written."

Last year, Republicans also complained that they were not given enough time to prepare for Justice Sotomayor's confirmation hearings, even though the timeline for Sotomayor's confirmation closely mirrored the one used for Chief Justice Roberts in 2005. 

If it wasn't this, it would be some other excuse. Delay is the only governing principle Republicans can offer.

Via Greg Sargent at The Plum Line, America hates British Petroleum:

Do you have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable impression of BP?

• 4% Very favorable
• 18% Somewhat favorable
• 39% Somewhat unfavorable
• 33% Very unfavorable

Who should pay for the clean-up from the oil leak -- the companies who were drilling for oil, the government or both?

• 79% The companies who were drilling for oil
• 1% The government
• 17% Both

For the credit where credit is due file, GOP Rep. Connie Mack called out Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul for his plan to strip the citizenship of children born in the U.S. to undocumented parents. Via Think Progress, the Tampa Bay Times reports Mack's statement:

“Late last week, Dr. Rand Paul, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky, said, 'We’re the only country I know that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen ... And I think that should stop also.'

“Certainly, it is Dr. Paul’s and others’ right to express their opinion, but as a candidate who strongly believes in the Constitution, Dr. Paul is wrong on this issue.

"As we all know, the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution explicitly states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States ...

The Constitution was created to limit government, protect liberty, and safeguard individual rights. Ignoring the plain meaning and written word of the Fourteenth Amendment – and indeed, the entire Constitution – disrespects the Constitution itself and discredits the candidate.”

Too bad he didn't speak up back when it was Bush and Cheney were disrespecting the Constitution, but hey, better late than never. Connie Mack joins the GOP-led Kentucky State Senate in rebuking Paul for his statements on the Civil Rights Act.

It might be too much to wish for, but Rand Paul could help hasten the inevitable fracturing of the Republican party. Connie Mack and Kentucky Republicans can't be the only ones who see where his party is headed in its relentless pursuit of the crazy base and doesn't like it.

They'll never run this in the U.S. ...

Expect a heaping helping today of this brand of conventional wisdom, as peddled by the campaign of Artur Davis:

While hard numbers were not yet available late Tuesday, long time observers in Davis' camp said Sparks' victory appears to have been achieved, at least in part, because of low voter turnout among blacks who, unlike two years ago when they showed up in big numbers to vote for Barack Obama, showed no such enthusiasm for Davis on Tuesday.

There is only one problem. The conventional wisdom is nowhere close to true. Consider the following graph of counties that are either partially or wholly in Davis' 7th Congressional District. Look at the vote totals, and look at how some of the blackest districts in Alabama behaved:

It wasn't that African-American voters did not come out and support their guy. They did, it was simply the fact that, with few exceptions (Sumter County being one, Choctaw County the other), they supported the other guy. Indeed, of the dozen counties either partially or wholly within the seventh district, Ron Sparks carried ten of them. Davis carried only two of them, and both of those with just 52% of the vote.

So, it was Davis' base that rejected him, and they did so soundly.

Why? Ta-Nehisi Coates explains this rather succinctly:

The underlying premise seems to be that Davis was somehow entitled to black votes. This despite the fact, as Michael Tomasky points out, that Davis reps a majority black district where one in five people lack health-care, but voted against the health care bill. You don't get to just stand in front the people and say "Hey I'm black and smart" and then wait for the torrent of civic pride.

If Darrell Issa can figure out how to gin up the Sestak/White House story into a way to impeach Obama, you know he's going to try. Which is just one more reason the Republicans retaking the House would be an unmitigated disaster for the country.

Reps. Darrell Issa of California, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, and Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, sent another letter to White House Counsel Bob Bauer on Wednesday, asking the White House to disclose specifics about any job offer to Sestak (D-Pa.) in exchange for dropping out of the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary.

By June 9, Issa wants the Obama administration’s legal records, memos to the press office, and e-mails and phone records in relation to the Sestak job offer. Issa and Smith also are asking for notes and transcripts of interviews with White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, former President Bill Clinton, Sestak and Sestak’s brother Richard, who serves as his campaign manager.

As long as we're investigating, maybe there's more to that old story about Issa's military lies.

It turns out that 12 years ago when Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) was running for Senate, the San Francisco Examiner uncovered that his Army record was in doubt.

The Examiner published in May 1998 a devastating article detailing the conflicts between Issa's public statements and public records. A focus in the story was Issa's claim he protected then-President Richard Nixon as part of an "elite Army bomb unit" at the World Series in 1971. But it turns out Nixon didn't even attend the games.

The Examiner scoured military records and concluded that Issa's service on the squad "was marred by a bad conduct rating, a demotion and allegations that he had stolen a fellow soldier's car." It cited his 1998 campaign biography saying he served in the Army nine years, even though records showed he served just over five years. He was enlisted from 1970-1972 and was in a college Army ROTC program from 1972 through 1976, the Examiner reported. It also noted that an Issa press release said he was "detailed to the Army security team" which traveled with Nixon, and quoted from a 1990 San Diego Union story that said Issa "was on a bomb disposal unit for President Nixon and got to see the 1971 World Series because Nixon wanted to go and the stadiums had to be secured."

That's almost as creative as the history Jan Brewer created for her father. But as long as Issa is in the mood to investigate, they might as well open up his own story as well.

In fact, it could be a test case for Hatch's "Stolen Valor Act," that legislation that makes it "illegal to air misleading public statements about one’s military service," unless one is Mark Kirk.

Despite growing evidence that the issue is a political dead-end for them with the majority of Americans, House Republicans are going to keep playing to their extremist base and run on repeal.

House Republicans are returning to their promise of repealing the Democrats' health care reform law with a retread of their own alternative plan that a Congressional Budget Office analysis last year determined would provide coverage for next to no one. Just in time for the midterm elections, the Republicans introduced legislation to scrap "Obama care" -- even parts that voters like -- and sub in their own version.

As a refresher, their plan would let people buy insurance across state lines, give states more power and would include tort reform to end so-called "junk lawsuits" that the Republicans say make health care costs more expensive. The CBO score last fall found  the GOP plan would cover just 3 million more people "leaving about 52 million" without insurance at about the same as the 2009 share of uninsured people. It would reduce premiums by between zero and three percent, CBO said. To hear the Republicans tell it, the measure would decrease premiums by "up to 20 percent." It reduces the deficit over time, but so does the Democrats' law.

While the House Republicans are trying to breathe life into this dead bill, Senate Republicans are trying to resurrect the battle by opening a new front. They are having hissy fits over Obama's nomination of Donald Berwick to run Medicaid and Medicare. Berwick is "a pediatrician and Harvard University professor with a self-professed “love” of the British system."

Now Senate Republicans are vowing to press their case against Obama’s sweeping new health care law by challenging Berwick’s nomination — just in time to resurrect the brutal yearlong health reform battle ahead of the midterm elections.

This is all about keeping the teabagger base happy and trying to keep them energized to vote in November. The House Republicans know their legislation isn't going to go anywhere, they know that even if they manage to gain back the House this election, they won't get a majority in the Senate or be able to overturn an inevitable veto. In the Senate, they will be able to block Berwick's nomination because they can keep putting holds on it. But that's not going to do anything to change the fact that they lost the fight against health insurance reform, and they can't undo it by keeping this man from being appointed.

There's not much logic to it, but logic isn't necessary with the extremists in the GOP base.

What a gig!

Minority Leader John A. Boehner has collected more than $1.4 million from business interests this election cycle for a committee he says he created to help fellow Republican lawmakers. But Boehner's committee has spent only about a third of its money helping other candidates.

About two-thirds of its expenditures have gone instead to costs the committee describes as necessary to raise money, including fine meals and trips to luxurious resorts where the congressman mingles with corporate-directed groups and lobbyists. Boehner (Ohio) has spent more than $182,000 through the committee on frequent travel with donors to Florida and similar vacation spots, according to Federal Election Commission records, including $70,403 at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples and more than $30,000 at Disney Resort Destinations.

It's quite the scam -- get corporate lobbyists to fund a lavish lifestyle, and reward them with favorable legislation and votes.

And in a year in which Republicans lag financially, and could benefit from cash to take advantage of a difficult political climate for Democrats, it's telling where Boehner's priorities lie -- himself and his lobbyist pals über alles.

The latest monthly job report from the Department of Labor comes out Friday. Given the heavy Census hiring, the report will probably be best we've seen in more than 10 years, maybe more than 20, recording as many 600,000 new jobs created. You have to go back to the Clinton administration to see a month even close to that. For comparison, last year at this time we clocked a loss of 387,000 jobs on top of even worse losses in the preceding eight months.

Unless a huge number of "missing workers" returned to the labor force in May, we'll also probably see a tenth of a point or two drop in the unemployment rate. So, Vice President Joe Biden will be right for at least one month.

But May's monthly numbers most likely will be the best job news for all of 2010 and 2011.

Why?

For one thing, some 400,000 of those new jobs we'll hear about Friday will be temporary Census jobs. Not to be sneezed at, of course. Welcome jobs to those who've got them. But this month, those same jobs will start going away. In May 2000, for instance, 348,000 people were hired for the Census. In June 2000, 225,000 of those jobs ended. By summer's end, almost all this year's Census hires will be looking for new employment. So when the job numbers come out on Friday, the ones to really look at will be how many people got hired by the private sector. It will not be surprising if those amount to 200,000 or more, a continuation of the trend that began picking up steam in February.

But the real test comes when the job-creation numbers for June and those that follow in the third quarter are released. We'll certainly see positive figures each month until year's end and beyond. But short of some miracle that persuades Congress to begin a new Works Progress Administration (or a Civilian Cleanup Corps for the Gulf of Mexico), we'll be totally dependent from here forward on private-sector hiring to put millions of out-of-work people back on the payroll. And, the general outlook – with some exceptions – is that this simply won't be enough to improve the situation in the next two years for the majority who have lost jobs.

Among the factors driving the situation are that the effects of the stimulus package passed 16 months ago will fade in the third and fourth quarters. Strapped state budgets from Oregon (a projected shortfall of $577 million) to New York (a projected shortfall of $9.2 billion) mean large numbers of layoffs of public employees, including teachers. Elizabeth McNichol and Nicholas Johnson at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, in Washington, D.C., noted last week that:

The worst recession since the 1930s has caused the steepest decline in state tax receipts on record. As a result, even after making very deep spending cuts over the last two years, states continue to face large budget gaps. At least 46 states face or have faced shortfalls for the upcoming fiscal year (FY 2011, which will begin July 1 in most states). These come on top of the large shortfalls that 48 states faced in their current budgets (FY 2010). States will continue to struggle to find the revenue needed to support critical public services for a number of years, threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The center’s Jon Shure puts a hard number on that, saying the overall effect may be about 900,000 jobs, "which is not a recipe for economic recovery — or for long-term improvement in the national deficit."

Newsweek reports:

Economists from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the centrist Brookings Institution, and the conservative Heritage Foundation may not all agree on much, but they agree on this: unemployment, which currently hovers around 10 percent, is not coming down significantly between now and November's midterm elections.

"I'm not aware of labor-market economists who expect unemployment to drop significantly before the midterms," says James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation. "The average for the last generation has been around 5.5 percent or so, and it won't be anywhere near that."

"My best guess is unemployment will be in November exactly what it is now," concurs Josh Bivens of EPI, adding that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects a yearlong average of 9.5 percent in 2011, and Goldman Sachs predicts higher unemployment in 2011 than in 2010.

As I said at the outset, that's not how everybody sees things. The Fed, for instance predicts a drop in the unemployment rate to 9.3 percent by the end of this year and 8.2 percent by the end of 2011. To get there, however, would require creating an average of 385,000 new jobs each month for the next seven months, and 323,000 for the 12 months after that, a total of 6.9 million jobs. When was the last time this was done in the past 50 years? Never.

• Another failed effort aimed at stopping the oil:

  The latest attempt to contain the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico hit a snag Wednesday when a diamond-tipped saw operated by an underwater robot got stuck in the riser pipe it was intended to slice off, federal officials said.

  This is the cut-and-cap idea that will actually increase the flow of oil by 20% until a containment dome is put over it ... the containment dome being the first plan that failed.

• Ouch:

  The Republican-led Kentucky Senate approved a sharply worded resolution Friday that was aimed at rebuking Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul's recent questioning of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

  Senate Resolution 31, filed by Sen. Gerald Neal, D-Louisville, and co-sponsored by all but one of his Republican and Democratic colleagues, expressed the Senate's support for the Civil Rights Act and criticized as "outside the mainstream of American values" those who oppose any part of the law.

  "Suggestions have appeared recently that we retreat from the core values of the protection of equal rights of the citizens of the United States," says Senate Resolution 31.
   
  Only an "extreme minority of persons in the United States" would support such a move, it says.

• Former Florida GOP chairman, and close pal to Michael Steele and Charlie Crist, has been arrested on charges of grand theft and money laundering. Crist says he does "not feel complicit."
• Another turncoat bites the dust:

  Former Congressman Rick Lazio emerged as the Republican Party’s preferred candidate for governor at an often raucous convention in Manhattan on Wednesday, dealing a fatal blow to the efforts of Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy to become the nominee of a party he joined only in March.

• Today's Republican Party:

  One of the winners in yesterday’s primary elections was state Sen. Alan Nunnelee, who secured the GOP nomination for a congressional seat in northern Mississippi. The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel notes that Nunnelee was an “[e]stablishment favorite” and raised the most campaign cash for the three-way race. However, Nunnelee is far out of the mainstream. In little-noticed comments on Saturday to a Rotary Club in Corinth, MS, Nunnelee said that Democratic policies are a bigger threat to the United States than Pearl Harbor or 9/11.

• South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley introduces the "dark side of politics" and her husband.
• The media assault against the former half-term governor from Alaska continues.
• And in other former half-term news, the Palin-Murkowski feud heats up.
• This should be fun:

  Arizona Governor Jan Brewer said on Tuesday that she intends to press the issue of border security in a meeting this week with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House.

• Is "electability" a code word for racism? The president of the Arkansas NAACP thinks so.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is so upset that some have invoked Godwin's Law when discussing her state's new Latino ethnic cleansing law.

"The Nazi comments . . . they are awful," she said, her voice dropping. "Knowing that my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany, that I lost him when I was 11 because of that . . . and then to have them call me Hitler's daughter. It hurts. It's ugliness beyond anything I've ever experienced."

Compelling! Except that she's pulling a Mark Kirk.

Gov. Jan Brewer said in a recent interview that her father died fighting Nazis in Germany. In fact, the death of Wilford Drinkwine came 10 years after World War II had ended.

During the war, Drinkwine worked as a civilian supervisor for a naval munitions depot in Hawthorne, Nev. He died of lung disease in 1955 in California.

Brewer made the comment to The Arizona Republic while talking about the criticism she has taken since signing SB 1070, the new immigration law that makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally.

"Knowing that my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany, that I lost him when I was 11 because of that... and then to have them call me Hitler's daughter. It hurts. It's ugliness beyond anything I've ever experienced," Brewer said in the story, published Tuesday.

Officials with the governor's administration said her statement should not be taken to mean that she was claiming her father was a soldier in Germany during the Nazi regime.

Ah yes, claiming her father died fighting Nazis in Germany should, in no way, be construed as implying that her father died fighting Nazis in Germany.

The lie has given one of her Republican primary opponents a huge opening.

"While (Mills) strongly objects to those who use the Nazi label to describe (SB) 1070 and Governor Brewer, that does not give the governor the right to alter history for the purpose of an eye-catching quote."

Mills is a former Marine who owns a gun school near Prescott.

Crazy year.

Here's a thought for any member of Congress or candidate to be one: If you've ever exaggerated your military service exploits in public, now would be a really good time to set the record straight.

Case in point, Ken Silverstein's report on GOP Rep. Gary Miller.

According to his bio page at Congress.org, which is published by the CQ-Roll Call Group, Miller served in the military between 1967 and 1968. The same information about Miller appears on a variety of other websites, including at the American Legion and Project Vote Smart, where it specifies that he served in the U.S. Army.

The Vietnam War was at its peak during the 1967-1968 period; to claim that you served during that period offers the suggestion that you saw combat or were at least deployed overseas, in the same way that saying you served in the Army in 1943 to 1944 would suggest World War II experience.

Miller never got anywhere near Vietnam. According to his military record, he spent about seven weeks in boot camp at Fort Ord, California between early-September and late-October 1967, at which point he was discharged.

After that story ran yesterday, Miller began correcting the record, but didn't take responsibility for the errors.

Miller told a local paper that "he didn’t know how the incorrect information got out," even though a number of the publications I cited — Congress.org and Project Vote Smart — use biographical information provided by the offices of elected officials.

A lot of politicians lie about a lot of things. But in the case of military service, it's kind of crazy, given that the military tends to keep extensive records.

Update: To clarify, Miller got a medical discharge after seven weeks in bootcamp.

The League of Conservation Voters is going after Blanche:

Big Oil Blanche," LCV is going on television in the Little Rock market with a commercial showing Lincoln's face next to images of former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney and the British Petroleum logo. The narrator intones: "Over the last two years, Blanche Lincoln has taken more oil and gas money than any other U.S. senator. ... Maybe she got that money because she helped Bush and Cheney give oil companies 14 billion in tax breaks, or because she voted to allow risky offshore drilling for BP and others. It's time to send big oil a message: on Tuesday, send Blanche Lincoln packing.

We can also help send that message:

Remember, the runoff election is next Tuesday.

Chalk up another "misrepresentation" of Mark Kirk's service record. Greg Sargent writes:

Mark Kirk's  Senate campaign has now acknowledged a second misrepresentation of his service record, admitting to me that his Web site falsely claimed that he was "the only member of Congress to serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom."

This latest admission comes after Kirk, an Illinois Congressman, recently admitted that his official bio had falsely claimed he'd been named U.S. Navy's Intelligence Officer of the Year award for his service during NATO'S war with Serbia in the 1990s....

Kirk actually served stateside in the Navy reserves during the Iraq War. The Kirk campaign, which had previously refused to publicly acknowledge the misrepresentation or respond to repeated requests about it, sent me a statement this morning admitting they corrected the false claim:

Kirk's 2005 campaign Web site noted this correctly. Unfortunately, the official Web site listed the word "in" instead of "during" but was corrected in 2005.

....

While the Kirk campaign is claiming to have corrected the falsehood five years ago, it's likely to become an issue in the Senate race. Dems will argue it fits into a larger pattern that includes two more recent misstatements by Kirk: A  campaign ad that repeated the false claim about the award, and Kirk's claim that his staff discovered and fixed that falsehood when in fact the Navy  tipped him off to it.

What's more, the falsehood about Kirk serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom was echoed in the media, with no signs it was ever corrected....

The Kirk campaign declined to say whether he'd apologize for any of the misrepresentations, as Blumenthal was forced to do.

A Republican? Apologize for something other than a sex scandal? Meanwhile, here's your liberal media at work.