Hillary Clinton rejects Israel's claims of secret deals with the Bush Administration regarding the settlements. That and other political news in today's TPMDC Saturday Roundup.

Reich: How Pharma and the insurances cos plan to kill the 'public option' in health care reform.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Don't forget to join the TPM fans group on Facebook!

Actually it came some time ago. But here's a telling public opinion nugget. A big majority (58%) of self-identified conservatives now support allowing gays to serve openly in the military.

For the population as a whole, support stands at 69%.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

I've suggested in my posts on the settlements issue that an Israeli government can't withstand any serious tension in the relationship with the United States. So as long as he remains popular at home, Obama holds almost all the cards in his battle with Netanyahu over settlements. Jeffrey Goldberg suggests that that is precisely what Obama is trying to do: topple Netanyahu's government. I've considered that too. And at some level I think he's right. But at another level I think the question is over-determined. I think that Obama and his people know that right now they have to start a series of steps that lead in the near term to a peace settlement. Settlements are the logical place to start. And whether it simply halts settlements, leads to Bibi's overthrow or forces him into a new coalition, every result gets you closer to the goal which is in the interests of the US, the Israelis and the Palestinians.

"Modern day lynchings" seem to happen to people who get caught trying to do old-fashioned lynchings.

For its latest cover, National Review goes with an Asian caricature of the Hispanic Sonia Sotomayor over the title "The Wise Latina."

Bay Buchanan: My karate-chopping racist staffer was the victim of a "modern day lynching."

Justin Elliott is usually pretty invisible to our readers but every once in a while we let him out from behind his curtain running the many moving parts of our front page news section to hone his reporting and writing chops. He dogged that NYT Page 1 story last month about the purported recidivism rate of Gitmo detainees, showing how what the Times reported didn't match what the (flawed) Pentagon report it was based on actually said. Conservatives quickly scooped up the Times story as a key talking point in opposing the closing of the Gitmo prison. Today the Times ran an extensive correction to the original story, and the paper's Washington bureau chief concedes it should not have been on the front page.

The U.S. Justice Department steps into the investigation of the murder of Kansas abortion doc George Tiller.

Why is it that the people who most insist the Holocaust didn't happen in the past most want it to happen in the future?

TPM Reader DL reports in on the Gordon Brown doings:

I am in the UK at present. I grew up here. The suggestion that Gordon Brown's government may not last the weekend was yesterday's news.

Some odious Blairite careerists, e.g. Blears, Purnell, have thrown their toys out of the pram. Good riddance.

Brown has structured a swift cabinet reshuffle. That much is becoming apparent in the last hour. It may be a weaker collection of characters, but enough heavy hitters like Mandelson, Darling, Miliband remain, with a few retreads and some interesting personalities such as Glenys Kinnocks getting on board, and Alan Sugar being made a Lord. Yes, there is widespread unhappiness among backbenchers, but rebellion there is not.

Brown survives is the story.

The subtext on how convincing the Conservative victory has been remains to be written, but local results so far suggest some voters walked away from them too (down 6% from the last local election). The full extent of the protest vote will be better known when the totals of the so called fringe parties, such as the Greens, UKIP etc. are tallied up on Sunday.

Brown does not need to go to the country until June 3rd, 2010. I would bet the farm that he will take as much of that remaining 12 months as possible. Brown has the opportunity to spend a year on the world stage with Obama. He's not going to walk away from that history. (And why David Miliband relinquish an opportunity to be involved in some Obama inspired modus vivendi in Israel and Palestine?)

The Labour Party will not win the next election, but it can work to avoid being obliterated, and, if anything, today's results suggest that the Tories may struggle to get more than a 20 or 30 seat majority. Brown knows the more time he has with Barack, the better.

We gave Sen. Inhofe's press secretary a chance to explain what the senator meant when he said that the Cairo speech was "unAmerican" and that he wasn't sure who's side Obama is on.

McClatchy has posted an interesting sampling of Iraqi reaction -- official and otherwise -- to Obama's Cairo speech.

Good column by Joe Klein on Charles Krauthammer's defense of the settler case and the 'natural growth' flimflam.

Maybe not quite on the order of "I am not a crook" or "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," but this declaration from Gordon Brown is a measure of the depth of his political troubles: "I'm not arrogant, and I'm never complacent."

For those who haven't been following this lately, the immediate cause of Brown's government being on the brink of collapse is Labour's dreadful showing in local elections. But it took more than one event or series of events for Brown to find himself in such perilous political waters. Not least among them was the MP expense scandal that brought down the Speaker of the House of Commons.

This is pretty rich -- both for Sen. Sessions (R-AL) and CNN for taking his line at face value. Sessions is saying he can feel Sonia Sotomayor's pain over being called a 'racist' since he was called a 'racist' too. Of course, in Sessions' case, it was for persecuting civil rights workers and calling an African-American employee "boy" and telling him to be respectful when talking to whites. But, hey, same difference, right?

Late Update: When I first did this post it was in reference to the online story CNN posted. Later though we saw this video version of the same story.

I would have figured that, as a reasonably youngish swinging single, Norm Coleman would be a bit more hip to the lingo. But here he is saying Republicans need to have to learn to compete on the "ethernet." So I guess there's still some work to be done.

Of course, I guess it's possible he's saying that Republicans need to learn to compete better on ethernet-based local area networks in offices. But who knows ...

Gordon Brown's government may not last the weekend.

As I mentioned last night, in the growing confrontation between Obama and Netanyahu over settlement policy, Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) managed to say something incredibly stupid, buying into the most hysterical settler propaganda. Here's Ackerman's press release from earlier this week. It's kind of a funny read. Because it has Ackerman trying to sort of support Obama but also bending over backwards to say that the real issue is not settlements but Palestinian terrorism and Iranian centrifuges.

In any case, here's the key passage I want to focus on. Ackerman says ...

I do not believe in, and I do not support a settlement freeze that calls on Israeli families not to grow, get married, or forces them to throw away their grandparents. Telling people not to have children is unthinkable and inhumane. Real life is messy and the exigencies of any vibrant population need to be acknowledged and accommodated.

In other words, Ackerman sees himself as taking a hardline against Obama's call for forced contraception and denial of marriage rights to settlers. This is so silly it's actually a challenge to explain. Gershom Gorenberg actually explains it pretty well here. But the essence is this. What we're talking about is the right to have your kids build their house and start their family down the street from you when they get married -- a 'right' few people in the world have.

There's some important context to understand here. A good number of the settlements are deep into the West Bank. But in modern transportation terms, most function as bedroom communities that are a reasonable commute from cities in Israel proper, where many of the settlers actually work. So, you live in settlement X, maybe when your daughter gets married and wants to start her own family there's no more room in the settlement and she and her husband have to buy a home fifteen miles away in Israel proper. To say such a freeze amounts to throwing away grandparents or telling people not to have children is really malicious nonsense.

More broadly, this whole debate is really about getting as many people settled in these settlement areas as possible and making a Palestinian state simply unworkable. That's the big picture. To create a Palestinian state at least most of the settlements (keep in mind the difference between 'settlers' and 'settlements', because the numbers are very different when you get into questions of geographical dispersion of relatively small settlements) must not just be stopped from growing but actually dismantled and evacuated. That is what this is all about. Are the settlements permanent or not. That's what all the electricity about a 'freeze' of settlements is about.

MSNBC: Liz Cheney is a "great guest."

Jo-Ann Mort has details from a week-end poll of Israeli views of Obama, the settlements and the larger Israel-Palestine question. Jo-Ann's take is a little different from mine. I think she's reading the numbers as showing a bit more support for Obama's stance than I do. But broadly speaking, these numbers show that Israelis are far from clearly opposed to Obama's stance. In fact, on key questions, they support Obama's take substantially more than they support their own Prime Minister.

The upshot is that many Israelis disagree with Obama's policies. But they're also worried about Netanyahu's inability to manage the releationship with the US. On the key question, a bare majority support a freeze on settlements.

Late Update: Jo-Ann has some important follow up on this issue, in part in response to my comments above.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), on Obama Cairo speech: "I just don't know whose side he's on."

Sarah Palin warns against "the creation of a fearful population" that government can control -- with no sense of irony for the last eight years. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

A few times recently I noted that at least as big a deal as what happened during Prime Minister Netanyahu's visit to the White House was what happened when he went to Captiol Hill, looking for support to resist Obama's call for a real freeze on settlements.

This comes from an article in Ha-aretz ...

But when Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu came to Capitol Hill for a May 18 meeting after being pressed by President Obama to freeze the expansion of West Bank settlements, he was "stunned," Netanyahu aides said, to hear what seemed like a well-coordinated attack against his stand on settlements. The criticism came from congressional leaders, key lawmakers dealing with foreign relations and even from a group of Jewish members.

They included Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee; California Democrat Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, and California Rep. Henry Waxman, a senior Democrat.
The Jewish lawmakers among them believed "it was their responsibility to make him [Netanyahu] very, very aware of the concerns of the administration and Congress," said a congressional aide briefed on the meeting. The aide, who declined to be identified, stressed that despite the argument on settlement issues, members of Congress remained fully supportive of Israel on all other issues, including the need to deal with Iran and the concern over Hamas and Hezbollah's activity.

In their meetings, according to the congressional aide, lawmakers rejected Netanyahu's call for Palestinian reciprocity on terrorism as a precondition and kept pressing him on the need to stop building in settlements.

Meanwhile, the right-leaning Jerusalem Post reports that a "senior administration official" says it's still possible to strike a deal between the US and Israel on settlements.

For some further, on-the-ground background on the settlements questions, take a few minutes and read this dispatch by Gershom Gorenberg, reporting from the West Bank for The American Prospect. It sheds a lot of light on what this whole controversy is about and what a scam the 'natural growth' argument is.

He also finds Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) making some shamefully stupid comments.

If you're not familiar with Gorenberg, you should check out Accidental Empire, his history of the birth of the settlements. He blogs here.

Late Update: Also see this editorial in The Forward.

For all the intense competition over who is the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor says her all-time favorite Justice is ... Benjamin Cardozo.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Virginia gubernatorial candidate gives out his cell phone number during forum televised statewide.

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA): "The Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade legislation is just another disguise and it's high time that we call it what it really is: a Wacky-Marxist Tax-and-Cap bill ..."

Former FBI agent Colleen Rowley, who came to national prominence after 9/11 for blowing the whistle on the bureau's failures to prevent the attacks, tells TPMmuckraker that the complaints the FBI received about Scott Roeder from another abortion clinic the same weekend he allegedly killed Dr. George Tiller "should have been jumped on much more aggressively."

Justice Department admits withholding exculpatory evidence in two other Alaska public corruption cases and asks for the two convicted state legislators to be released from jail pending resolution of their cases. DOJ isn't dropping the cases.

Tiananmen Square: 20 years later.

Our highlight reel of the Obama Cairo speech ... in 4:43.

Gentiles telling me that Obama isn't taking the Holocaust seriously enough.

Also cool was Rep. John Boehner just telling me that Obama had equated Israel with Hamas.

Daniel Levy: Ten Things You Should Know about Obama's Speech.

Andrea Mitchell, a few minutes ago questioning Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar about Obama's Middle East policy: "Do you have any concerns that Israel does not have an equal seat at the table?"

Liz Cheney is blanketing the airwaves again today, and as is more often the case than not, she's the lone guest, unchallenged by someone with teeth from the reality-based community -- a privilege usually reserved for high officials or newsmakers. Obama hand-holding terrorists? Check. Saddam connected to Al Qaeda? Check.

It's an example of what E.J. Dionne was writing about in today's column:

A media environment that tilts to the right is obscuring what President Obama stands for and closing off political options that should be part of the public discussion. ...

The power of the Limbaugh-Gingrich axis [I would add the Cheneys] means that Obama is regularly cast as somewhere on the far left end of a truncated political spectrum. He's the guy who nominates a "racist" to the Supreme Court (though Gingrich retreated from the word yesterday), wants to weaken America's defenses against terrorism and is proposing a massive government takeover of the private economy. ...

Democrats are complicit in building up Gingrich and Limbaugh as the main spokesmen for the Republican Party, since Obama polls so much better than either of them. But the media play an independent role by regularly treating far-right views as mainstream positions and by largely ignoring critiques of Obama that come from elected officials on the left.

Amen to that.

Still kinda weird that Obama is president.

The larger version is here. And you can see our entire slideshow of Obama's tour of Egypt here.

TPM Reader MD: Apparently Hillary Clinton is also a secret Muslim. Who knew?

TPM Reader ML: "My wife would TOTALLY rock that scarf."

TPM Reader AP: "Okay, God, the past twelve months were all a joke and I'm really President of the United States now, right?"

TPM Reader GW: "They think I'm likeable enough! They really think I'm likeable enough!!"

The parts of Obama's Cairo speech you shouldn't miss.

AEI has a new blog, for those of you who haven't seen it. Michael Rubin explains how Obama has given in to the Arab whiners. Dani Pletka explains that Obama has joined forces with autocracy and demoralized the millions Bush inspired in the Arab world.

A new indictment of Thomas Kontogiannis, one of the Duke Cunningham bribers who had murky ties to U.S. intelligence, charges him and eight others with a huge $92 million mortgage fraud scheme.

Tommy K. is still serving time for his role in the Cunningham scandal. He's due to be released in 2014, though the latest charges could ultimately push that back a bit.

Jon Stewart on Cheney's media tour.

Rumblings that Norm may not have the stomach to keep playing the delay game if the Minnesota Supreme Court calls the election for Franken.

You can watch Obama's speech here and read the text of it here.

The Senate GOP leadership has reportedly greenlighted continued attacks on Judge Sotomayor from the same outside conservative groups that the Senate GOP has publicly been trying to distance itself from. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

MJ Rosenberg breaks down eight messages in Obama's Cairo speech.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

We knew Tim Pawlenty was running for president when he went on the Cavuto show and claimed that Obama is turning America into "some sort of, you know, republic from South America circa 1970s" by 'nationalizing the auto, health and energy industries. Take a look.

Some more reader response on Sorkin.

TPM Reader LM:

One point being missed, especially in light of Sorkin's response, is the flip side of this--those "iconic" non-union industries and companies who have also and concurrently failed miserably and who have really been the biggest contributor to our (and the world's) economic meltdown--the Wall Street firms (Bear Sterns, Lehman), the big banks (Citi, BofA), etc. But folks like Sorkin did grow up over the last 30 years experiencing the love affair with all things free-market and an overinflated opinion and underdeveloped knowledge of our financial markets in particular. That has no doubt clouded his (and similar journalists') judgment and opinions.

TPM Reader PS:

Did y'all notice this of Sorkin's conceit in his response: Why don't we ask the reverse question -- to what extent has the lack of a union played in the decline of industries such as financials, tech companies (dot com boom), etc.? Unions can play an effective check on management's excesses (drive toward ever increasing financial innovation, perhaps) by requiring management to focus on fundamentals.

Gov. John Lynch signs gay marriage bill.

TPM Reader HW:

Sorkin's comments on media bias are one component of a reigning narrative about economic policy in America that we've been stuck with for a very long time that has always betrayed a very specific class bias among journalists. It's a story that many of us have heard from our upper middle class baby boomer Dads over and over again and inevitably goes something like this:

Liberalism in the 60's and '70s were well-intentioned and of course the civil rights movement was necessary, but "interest groups" (read: unions and minorities) "went too far" and the government tried to do "too much." Government over-regulated and over-taxed and spent too much on programs that didn't work. Unions choked our competitiveness. Liberals didn't properly account for unintended consequences of government programs and the degree to which the government would interfere with the free market and it screwed up the economy. Plus, the social programs alienated "mainstream Americans" (read: white Christians). It turned out we needed Reagan to cut taxes, break the unions (ie air traffic controllers), and deregulate to fix things again.

Whether some of that is true or not is beside the point (based on my recent reading of Matusow's "Unraveling of America," its not all untrue). But I was seven in 1980, Sorkin was three. This view of the world is frozen in an era that's been gone for three decades. Its as if nothing has happened since, like a major opening in the wealth inequality gap, the rise in competition from heavily unionized Western Europe, the failure of supply side economics, or the shift in the economy from heavy manufacturing of goods to the provision of services.

To marry yourself to this narrative for all time no matter what happens in the world seems to be, well, pretty bad journalism for starters. It was kind of understandable, if not excusable, when it resulted from the fact that mainstream journalists themselves came of age through the era of the '60s and '70s that manifested this narrative. But when it results from their privileged children recycling the narrative, it makes me wonder why those children, who are supposed to be journalists, aren't formulating their own views of the world based on the three decades since the '70s in which they themselves have lived.

What does the New York Times pay Andrew Ross Sorkin for if he hasn't formed a view of unions in America based on events that have occurred in his lifetime? Couldn't we just keep paying Cokie Roberts to come on morning shows if all we wanted was recycled, conventional baby boomers wisdom devoid of any observation or original thought?

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

In a statement to and interview with TPMDC, the NYT's Andrew Ross Sorkin apologizes for the flip nature of his union-bashing comments and says he "did not mean to suggest that there are literally no successful companies that employ union workers."

We're still at it compiling our list of successful companies (defined as profitable in 2008) which are unionized. You can watch the Sorkin performance in this union-bashing segment of MSNBC's Morning Joe.

A few things become quickly apparent as you start going over the list and thinking for a moment about the degree of unionization in U.S. industry. The first is that unions remain pervasive in old economy industries like natural resource extraction and manufacturing, industries which have taken their licks of course but continue in many cases to remain profitable. Unions also remain pervasive in older industries that we don't always think of as old economy because they've adapted to new technologies, industries like telecommunications and entertainment (from the TV networks to the movie studios), where many companies have done very well.

Then there's the mergers and acquisitions dynamic, which complicates what it means to be "unionized." Divisions and subsidiaries of the same company may have vastly different levels of unionization, depending on the kind of work they do and their history prior to being acquired. So there's less black and white in large companies, and they can't be as easily categorized as union or non-union shops.

If all of those nuances complicate putting together a list of successful unionized companies, then they surely argue against as sweeping a charge as Sorkin's: that you can't name any such companies.

Andy Stern, on the Sorkin union bashing.

Yep, he's sure running for president.

Out-going Gov. Pawlenty (R) of Minnesota is on Fox right now talking about Obama's 'nationalization' of the health, auto and energy industries in the US and comparing to the country to a Latin American dictatorship circa 1970.

We'll bring you the details shortly.

Reed Hundt brings us the latest on the 'Green Bank' idea.

As a white man, I'm proud that Pat Buchanan is becoming the lead public advocate for the White Male Movement.

As you've seen, this morning on Morning Joe, The New York Times Andrew Ross Sorkin suggested that few if any unionized companies are successful and profitable -- a demonstrably false claim. And David Kurtz and our news team are on the case, reporting the story out and compiling a list of companies that belie this claim.

Now, it's no secret to you that TPM has an editorial outlook that is broadly sympathetic to the union movement. But what strikes me about this comment is that it's not some random chat show yakker like Hannity or Scarborough. This is one of the Times top business reporters. He runs their markets and finance blog -- Dealbook, which is actually quite good and a sign, I think, that the Times is very much in the new media, iterative journalism chase. So quite apart from the politics of it, this is just a jarring level of ignorance about corporate America from someone in that position.

Teamsters chief James Hoffa gives TPMDC a list of successful unionized companies: "The Morning Joe team really should be embarrassed for showing their lack of knowledge on the subject."

Here's our list.

Former GE CEO Jack Welch, challenging Joseph Stiglitz last week at a Vanity Fair forum moderated by ... Andrew Ross Sorkin: "Give me a highly successful unionized industry."

There's really no topic I'm following with more interest at the moment than the back and forth between the Netanyahu government and the Obama White House over the issue of settlements. Netanyahu's advisers now seem to be pushing the line that Prime Minister Sharon had understandings with President Bush that on-going settlement building was fine within areas already designated for settlement growth and that, at least implicitly, a broad swath of settlements the US now accepts as permanent.

This is an iffy argument on a number of levels -- not least of which is that such an agreement would conflict with the 'Road Map', which would have a higher standing than a bilateral agreement reached by the US and Israel. More to the point, though, while governments generally put a lot of weight on honoring understandings of predecessors, the Bush 'letter' wasn't a treaty or even a formal bilateral agreement. So I don't think it has any force at all -- setting aside that it conflicts with the Road Map.

More generally, as I said, I'm extremely interested to see how this develops. And we're also interested as an organization. And this is a question that's all going to be in the murmurs and nuances, in terms of seeing how the jousting between the two governments evolves. So if and when you see new details in articles you read, please send them along to me.

Late Update: A key part of this equation is what happens in Congress -- particularly on the Democratic side of the aisle. There have been signs that AIPAC has been having its usual level of success getting members of Congress to sign letters to the president, and so forth. But I've been more interested to see indications that when Netanyahu's intermediaries have gone to members of Congress to sound out what they're willing to do to push back against the emerging policy, that they have not been hearing what they'd like to hear. TPM Reader LR just sent me this post by James Besser at The Jewish Week that looks more deeply into this part of the settlements equation.

Obama in Saudi Arabia.

The Morning Joe crew was bashing on unions this morning, when the NYT's Andrew Ross Sorkin, a guest, declared:

"Name a successful unionized company. Think. You're going to go to [commercial] break before you come up with one. And that's the problem."

At that point, I expected the union workers in the studio to drop a rack of lights on the cast. Was the rest of the cast's acquiescence in Sorkin's broadside a concession that NBC is not a successful company? Poor Jeff Zucker.

So I throw it out to readers. Can you give us examples of major successful unionized companies? And for purposes of clarity, let's define "successful" as turned a profit in 2008. That's a pretty high standard since 2008 was such a dismal year. But not an unreachable standard, I don't think. Send us your examples, preferably with links.

Late Update: Media Matters is already on the case and offers UPS as a prime example. It's biggest union is ... horror of horrors ... the Teamsters. We'll be listing reader examples here.

Later Update: Reader email deluge in response. You can see the growing list here. But please try to include links in your email to the company's 2008 profitability and to the fact of its unionization.

Here's Scott Roeder, the prime suspect in the murder of Dr. George Tiller. This is a picture from 1998, presumably from when he got arrested for having bomb parts in his car. You can find more of our reporting on Roeder here.

Dan Froomkin watched the first installment of NBC's behind the scenes at Obama White House special -- so you don't have to (but if you can't resist, click here).

Speculation is growing in Minnesota that ex-Sen. Coleman may try to get back on the government payroll by running for governor after the Supreme Court or the Hague or the Federation Council or whoever can give a final ruling that will convince Coleman the senate thing is over.

Newt backs off calling Sotomayor a racist -- just says she bases her judicial rulings on race.

Jeff Sessions is pleased, telling CNN:

"I'm very glad he backed off. I think that's unusual, that commentators do that, and I think it was very good that he did. I think that will help - help us. I think that will help us have a real good discussion about the serious issues that the nation faces and that the court faces. And there's some disagreements about that. "

Wonder what Sessions will think, publicly, about Pat Buchanan's latest on Sotomayor: "In her world, equal justice takes a back seat to tribal justice."

We're listening to Mitt Romney on TV right now complaining about Obama's speech in Egypt, essentially saying that he's 'apologizing' for America, etc. I mention this because it of a piece with his recent presidential positioning, basically trying to corner the market on the Bush/War on Terror legacy. He made much the same arguments in his recent speech attacking Obama at the Heritage Foundation.

During the Democratic primary season, President Bush had to call in then-Secretary of State Condi Rice to explain to him what the big deal was with Joe Biden calling Barack Obama "articulate and bright and clean."

The release of a new Osama bin Laden audiotape coincides with Obama's Middle Eastern trip. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Brian Williams, on the access his crew got for NBC's two-night primetime behind-the-scenes look at the Obama White House: "To be in the hallway when the president walks by with a handful of M&Ms, popping them in his mouth as he goes to visit his chief of staff -- it was unbelievable."

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor has been on the Hill today meeting with senators of both parties. One of the issues being negotiated somewhat publicly between Democratic and Republican senators is the timeframe for her confirmation hearing. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, said today after visiting with Sotomayor that the hearing should not happen before September -- a much longer process under much simpler circumstances than for either John Roberts or Sam Alito.

Earlier, committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has said he would press forward more quickly with hearings if conservatives keep up their race-based attacks on Sotomayor.

Just out from Ha'aretz ...

United States President Barack Obama made a surprise appearance Tuesday at a meeting Defense Minister Ehud Barak was holding in Washington, shortly before the U.S. leader was set to leave on a trip to the Middle East.

Obama spoke for about 15 minutes with Barak, who was meeting with National Security Adviser Gen. Jim Jones at the time.

The unplanned encounter came a day after senior American officials harshly criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his policies, causing tensions between the Obama administration and Israel's government to near crisis levels.

Late Update: Also see this very interesting column by Bradley Burston in Ha'aretz on what June may hold.

U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan has dropped her much-maligned case against former Pittsburgh coroner Cyril Wecht after an adverse evidentiary ruling from the judge hearing the retrial of Wecht after an earlier hung jury. Complete Wecht coverage here (and, yes, Buchanan -- a Bush appointee who was connected to the U.S. Attorney purge -- is still U.S. attorney).

Shorter GOP: Sotomayor | Race | Race | Race

Rick Santorum: Black people could learn a thing or two about marriage from watching the Obamas -- but better for them to have date night at the corner bar rather than on Broadway.

Late Update: Watch the video.

I hope I'm wrong. But Gov. Tim Pawlenty's (R) apparent decision not to seek reelection does not bode well for Al Franken's ability to get seated in the senate any time soon. That's because the most probable next step in the endless Franken-Coleman drama is that the Minnesota Supreme Court will rule in Franken's favor and it will fall to Pawlenty to issue the certificate of election that will get him seated in the senate. The details are sort of murky. But the upshot is that Pawlenty will likely have just enough wiggle room to refuse to do so, if he wishes, perhaps using the excuse of possible litigation on Coleman's behalf in the federal judiciary.

As long as he was going to run for governor and had to face Minnesota voters again, there was good reason for him not to completely stick his finger in the eye of the election process. But now that's not holding him back. And since he's probably running for president, he'll have tons of incentive to pander to the hardcore tea-bagging wing of the GOP and keep Franken out of the senate as long as he can.

Late Update: Several readers make the good point that much depends on just how the Supreme Court rules for Franken, assuming they rule in his favor. It's possible the Court could give quite specific instructions to Pawlenty, which he'd be hard-pressed to ignore. So the devil will be in the details of the ruling.

There's been a lot of push on the pro-choice side to identify the murder of George Tiller as an act of domestic terrorism rather than a simple murder or 'abortion clinic shooting.' It's a push I agree with. But there's a detail in Zack Roth's follow up piece on the shooting that puts the issue in a much more concrete light. Roeder, the suspect in Tiller's murder, had apparently twice tried to vandalize another clinic in the last two weeks -- and in a way that suggested it might be setting the stage for a more serious break in. An employee at the clinic managed to get Roeder's license plate number and reported it to federal authorities, only to be told that nothing could be done before a grand jury had been impaneled.

It seems difficult to imagine that similar suspicious behavior, let alone actual vandalism, would have generated such a passive response if the clinic had been a synagogue or a federal building and the suspect had an Arab name.

Former Iraq commander Ricardo Sanchez: We need a truth commission "so that our soldiers are never abandoned on the battlefield again like mine were."

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a GOP presidential possibility, will not seek a third term next year, WCCO is reporting. Pawlenty will hold a press conference this afternoon.

From the Wausau (Wisconsin) Daily Herald ...

The Republican Party of Marathon County has stripped its spokesman of his title less than three months after he wrote a column critical of conservative talk radio star Rush Limbaugh.

Kevin Stevenson said he believes his March guest column in the Wausau Daily Herald criticizing Limbaugh turned local party members against him.

"They felt I was too moderate in what I was speaking and printing," he said.

You may have heard that President Obama is nominating Republican Congressman John M. McHugh of New York to serve as Secretary of the Army.

That's going to set up what looks likely to be another fiercely contested special election in New York's 23rd district, akin to the one earlier this spring in NY-20. Eric Kleefeld takes a look at which party is in the stronger position going in.

There's an important article today in Ha-aretz about the rising tensions between Israel and the US over the settlement issue. Among other things, it confirms Laura Rozen's reporting from last week. Here's a key passage ...

Tensions between the Obama administration and Benjamin Netanyahu's government are nearing crisis levels after senior American officials harshly criticized the prime minister and his settlements policies on Monday.

"The Israelis apparently wanted to check if we are serious on settlements, and they found out that we are," a senior official told Haaretz. "This has nothing to do with the speech in Cairo, and it's going to be our position after the speech in Cairo, because we believe it's in Israel's long-term security interests."

Last night Defense Minister Ehud Barak met in New York with the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell. The American told Barak that the U.S. was no longer willing to return to the understandings between the Sharon and Olmert governments and the Bush administration, which allowed continued settlement construction.

Mitchell said the administration was particularly unhappy about the Netanyahu government's unwillingness to recognize the principle of two states for two peoples.

You'll definitely want to read the whole Ha-aretz article. It dovetails with and gives more background on the points Obama made in his interview with NPR.

There's no shortage of discussion of the fact that there's a strong Israel lobby in the US which can exercise a great deal of pressure when a US administration applies pressure on Israel. What gets much less discussion in the US is the other side of this complex relationship. No Israeli government can last for long if it gets seriously out of step with an incumbent US administration, especially if that administration is popular at home. Indeed, over the last two decades, two Likud governments have fallen in substantial measure because they had gotten out of step with the US and were perceived in Israel as having failed to manage the US relationship -- the Shamir government in the early 90s and the first Netanyahu government in the late 1990s. As many other commentators have noted, failing to keep the US-Israel relationship on track is something akin to the 'third rail' of Israeli politics.

Keep watching closely.

Bill O'Reilly, on the Tiller murder.

Anti-Sotomayor ringleader: I had no idea our race-based smear campaign would bring out such extreme racism.

Outreach, Fourth of July style: The Obama Administration has authorized U.S. embassies around the world to invite Iranian officials to their July 4 celebrations. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Among those lobbying hardest for real progress toward a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict there has been deep disappointment that President Obama appears unlikely to specifically address the conflict, or any proposals for resolving it, in his upcoming speech in Cairo. If not now, when?, the thinking goes. And the longer Obama goes without setting forth his own plan, the more likely he is to miss his opportunity and drift back into the endless cycle of confidence building measures that lead nowhere.

But one very encouraging sign is that the Obama administration seems to be serious on the issue of settlements. Laura Rozen published this very interesting post last week in which she reported that after his trip to the White House, Prime Minister Netanyahu had been probing through back channels looking for some for some 'give' in Obama's line on settlements. But he wasn't finding any. As Laura put it, ...

According to many observers in Washington and Israel, the Israeli prime minister, looking for loopholes and hidden agreements that have often existed in the past with Washington, has been flummoxed by an unusually united line that has come not just from the Obama White House and the secretary of state, but also from pro-Israel congressmen and women who have come through Israel for meetings with him over Memorial Day recess. To Netanyahu's dismay, Obama doesn't appear to have a hidden policy. It is what he said it was.

The Times tomorrow has a piece on the same topic, saying something similar though in much more general terms. Here Netanyahu is reacting to the unreasonableness of placing restrictions on what is termed "natural growth", a euphemism that one must understand to get a proper handle on the whole question.

In Israel, the language of settlement growth is divided into two categories -- building new settlements and "natural growth" of existing ones. Even the Netanyahu government says it won't allow new settlements, only the 'natural growth' of original ones. And that doesn't sound unreasonable on the face of it. After all, families grow. Children get married and start their own families.

Many of the current settlements are much bigger in terms of the land that has been designated for them then they're actually built up. So, for instance, take the example of Manhattan at the end of the 18th century. If you could go back with an airplane and cruise over this island of ours you'd see that New York then was still a settlement mainly restricted to the southern tip of the Island. Today the whole island is packed to the gills with people and buildings. By the terms of settlement vocabulary, that's all just been 'natural growth', just filling out an already existing area designated for settlement.

In any case, 'natural growth' really is the most natural thing in the world if -- and this is what all turns on -- if you think the settlements are permanent. If the existing settlements are permanent, then it's silly to think that one settler can live in a house but it's forbidden to build a new house on the lot next door.

But if the settlements are permanent, then a Palestinian state is basically impossible. And that means the occupation is permanent, as is the conflict.

Now, if you think arresting the growth of the settlements in the dysfunctional politics of contemporary Israel is difficult, try dismantling them. I've long worried that any effort to dismantle them would lead to something like civil war in the country. Because the settlers, at least the most ideological ones, are completely indifferent to the rule of law.

But resolving the conflict is impossible with the West Bank settlements. And before you can dismantle them, you have to start to by stopping their growth. And on this point Obama seems like he means business.

We had a number of posts today on Marcus Epstein, the Tancredo and Buchanan staffer who had to plead guilty to a hate crime a couple years ago in Washington, DC. But TPM Reader BS just flagged this photo album on Marcus's Facebook page about his trip to Ethiopia. You can start with this picture and work your way through. This one's a special moment too.

The key is the captions.

After seeing these it's awful shocking he ended up drunk in Georgetown, screaming racial epithets and attacking a black woman.

LeRoy Carhart, a Nebraska physician who has been working at George Tiller's Wichita clinic for ten years, says the clinic will resume operations Monday on a permanent basis. "What people need to know is... the women's services that we provided for 30 years are not going to change. The same abortion services will remain available in Wichita."

Okay, he is a key source of evil in the political universe. But Dick Cheney did appear to endorse full marriage equality today in a Q&A at the National Press Club. So kudos for that.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Looks like Tancredo staffer and karate-chopping racist Marcus Epstein won't be attending UVA Law School after all.

Marcus Epstein: "Diversity can be good in moderation -- if what is being brought in is desirable. Most Americans don't mind a little ethnic food, some Asian math whizzes, or a few Mariachi dancers -- as long as these trends do not overwhelm the dominant culture."

In other words, we don't mean America has to be literally 100% white so long as the outsiders stick to marginalized and degraded roles in kitschy entertainment and ethnic cooking.

TPMDC's Brian Beutler just spoke to Bay Buchanan who says Epstein has "shown tremendous courage" and "turned his life around" since the racist karate-chopping incident.

Racist freak karate chopper Epstein doesn't just work for former Rep. Tancredo. He works for Pat Buchanan too.

So who is Scott Roeder, the man who apparently shot and killed Dr. George Tiller? We've got the details here. The upshot is that he's been knocking around various right-wing extremist and terrorist groups for something like twenty years.

And here's our slideshow of Dr. Tiller's life and the events surrounding his death.

We're running down leads on the Tancredo speechwriter story. But it seems like Marcus Epstein, the Tancredo aide who pled guilty to screaming racial epithets while assaulting a black woman, might be one of the new generation of violent racist freaks -- being himself half Jewish and half Korean.

Norm's lawyer got knocked around pretty good by the Minnesota Supreme Court justices in this morning's oral argument.

Late Update: Franken's lawyer got some grilling, too, though not of the same caliber. The smart money all along has been on the Supreme Court ruling for Franken, and nothing happened today to change that assessment, our Eric Kleefeld tells me. If anything, it reinforced it.

Later Update: Coleman's lawyer got one more chance to convince the Supreme Court at the end of oral arguments. It doesn't sound like he made much headway there either, though let me stipulate that reading oral arguments for signs of how a court will rule is an inexact science at best.

The only reason I guess I'm even vaguely surprised is that former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R) has done such a successful job at mainstreaming his racist swill. But it turns out his former speechwriter, who still works for Tancredo, recently had to plead guilty to a hate crime.

Bad headline aside, the National Law Journal gives some much-needed context to Judge Sotomayor's purportedly high reversal rate.

And in case you missed it Friday, Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSblog has reviewed all of Judge Sotomayor's appeals court rulings dealing with race. The outcomes suggest she's the opposite of a "reverse racist," to use Newt's Rush's formulation.

Jed Lewison has put together a must-see reel of Bill O'Reilly's rhetorical attacks on Dr. George Tiller. More here.

What to expect today at the Minnesota Supreme Court.

You know the Republican opposition machine has reached a bizarre place when the serious question of the day is whether prominent GOP mouthpieces should continue to call Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor a racist. In today's Sunday Show Roundup we see who takes the bait and who has the gall to actually push back against the racism label ...

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Oral arguments before the Minnesota Supreme Court this morning on Norm Coleman's appeal of his loss in the Minnesota Senate trial. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

An Air France flight from Rio to Paris with 228 people on board has vanished from radar 186 miles off the coast of Brazil.

Late Update: The plane was likely maybe brought down by lightning, Air France says.

Later Update: Subsequent reports have softened the comments of the Air France official. Lightning merely a possibility.

From TPM Reader AB ...

I've read alot about Dr. Tiller having been the focus of the Operation Rescue terror operations in the '90s. However, I'd bet good money that the proximate trigger for this asassination was the right-wing publicity over Tiller as a benefactor of HHS Head Kathleen Sebelius when she was Governor of Kansas. That was the "hot button" that the right wing anti-choice crowd pressed. And this is the result. Google "tiller + sebelius" and you'll see what I mean.

I did. You can do the search by clicking here. Pretty interesting stuff.

One thing I confess I'd totally missed was that questions about donations from Tiller, his wife and affiliated groups were a major issue pressed by Republicans during Sebelius's confirmation hearings.

The AP has now reported the name of the man in custody on suspicion of murdering George Tiller: 51 year old Scott Roeder. Hunter at Dailykos and others have done some initial googling. And it seems there's a good deal of information already out there about Roeder's past -- sort of a all purpose rightwing nut. "Sovereign citizen", tax protester, longtime Operation Rescue guy, did an earlier stint in the slammer for having bomb components in his car trunk.

Statement from Attorney General Holder ...

"The murder of Doctor George Tiller is an abhorrent act of violence, and his family is in our thoughts and prayers at this tragic moment. Federal law enforcement is coordinating with local law enforcement officials in Kansas on the investigation of this crime, and I have directed the United States Marshals Service to offer protection to other appropriate people and facilities around the nation. The Department of Justice will work to bring the perpetrator of this crime to justice. As a precautionary measure, we will also take appropriate steps to help prevent any related acts of violence from occurring."

from the Colorado Independent ...

Hours after the Sunday morning shooting death of late-term abortion doctor George Tiller in Wichita, Kan., a Boulder physician -- who says he could be the only doctor in the world still performing the procedure -- said Tiller's assassination was the "absolutely inevitable consequence" of decades of anti-abortion fanaticism.

Read the rest of the article here.

Anti-abortion extremist Randall Terry responds to Tiller murder ...

George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder. Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.

In other words, the only problem is that Tiller didn't have time to repent before assassination.

Does Tiller murder presage a surge in right-wing domestic terrorism?

Here's part of Planned Parenthood's statement on Tiller ...

Dr. Tiller was the epitome of high quality medical care underscored by deep compassion for his patients. He provided critical reproductive health care services, including abortion services to women facing some of the most difficult medical circumstances. He was continually harassed by abortion opponents for much of his career - his clinic was burned down, he was shot by a health center protestor, and he was recently targeted for investigation only to be acquitted by a jury just a few months ago. None of this stopped George Tiller from his commitment to providing women and their families with compassionate care that others were unwilling to offer.

Gitlin on who gets to shout 'identity politics'.

A few readers have objected -- in a few cases, quite heatedly -- to our use of the phrase "abortion doctor" in our feature headline about the murder of Kansas Ob-Gyn George Tiller -- the idea being that by not referring to him simply as a "doctor" or an "Ob-Gyn" we're buying into the rightwing hysteria/demonization of doctors who carry out abortions.

I thought of this when we put together the feature. But headlines can only contain a few words. And referring to him as a "doctor" or "ob-gyn" wouldn't have provided any information or context for why he was murdered or what the story was about. Some doctor got murdered in Wichita ... Why is that a feature story? So, I understand and respect the criticism. But I thought this was the clearest and most appropriate way to headline the story.

Late Update: Several readers suggested some version of the headline we've now switched to in the feature spot to the right: "George Tiller, Doctor Who Provided Abortions, Shot and Killed"

The Sunday talk shows this weekend were all Sotomayor talk, all the time. Check it out at today's TPMDC Sunday Roundup.

From the Wichita Eagle ...

George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death Sunday morning as he walked into church services.