MSNBC announced that it has hired liberal radio host Ed Schultz to anchor its 6 pm hour starting on Monday. The current anchor, David Shuster, will co-host the 3 pm and 4 pm hours with Tamron Hall and substitute as host of Countdown With Keith Olbermann.
Working with the public relations firm that was responsible for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign, wealthy conservative Rick Scott is crusading against health care reform. However, as the former head of Columbia/HCA, Scott was at the center of “the nation’s biggest health care fraud scandal.” “He hopes people don’t Google his name,” said John E. Hartwig, a former deputy inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Israel’s new “hawkish nationalist” foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, declared yesterday that Israel “would not be bound by a U.S.-backed understanding to work toward establishing a Palestinian state.” In a “blunt and belligerent” speech, Lieberman said “those who think that through concessions they will gain respect and peace are wrong, it is the other way around; it will lead to more wars.”
Gen. David Petraeus said yesterday that “American commanders have requested the deployment of an additional 10,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year” and that he is awaiting President Obama’s final decision. Petraeus acknowledged that the troops-to-population ratio is “significantly lower than the 20 troops per 1,000 people prescribed by the Army counterinsurgency manual he helped write.”
9: Number of American troops killed in Iraq during March, the lowest monthly total since the war began, according to icasualities.org.
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) is today introducing legislation “to set up a permanent federal commission on women just weeks after President Barack Obama created an interagency council to focus the government’s policies towards women and girls.” Women Count, which has a petition urging Congress to support Speier’s bill here.
President Obama, who is attending the G20 summit, “is enjoying a 61% job approval rating at home for handling foreign affairs, up seven points since February.” Obama’s economic approval rating “has slipped slightly, from 59% in February to 56% today.”
At the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s spring dinner last night, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said that “Republicans shouldn’t oppose President Obama as a reflex and should praise him when he succeeds.” “I also think its important for us to nod to the president when he’s right. He will not always be wrong,” Romney said.
Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) told The Hill yesterday that “he intends to approach Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) on the Senate floor this week to see” if they can craft an alternative to the Employee Free Choice Act, which Specter effectively blocked last week. “I see this time now as really an opportunity for compromise or for a new approach on addressing some of the issues that revolve around that issue,” said Pryor.
If Al Franken is still ahead after Norm Coleman exhausts his options in Minnesota State courts, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) “will have a choice: sign the election certificate that will allow Democrats to seat Franken in the Senate or play to the Republicans whose support he’d need in 2012 by withholding the certificate while Coleman challenges the election in the federal court system.”
And finally: President Obama’s limo is “nicknamed ‘The Beast’, and it seems it was designed for wide American roads.” Yesterday, administration staffers struggled to “park the Cadillac outside Downing Street for the President’s meeting with the Prime Minister, eventually managing an unwieldy three-point turn.” Watch the tricky maneuver here.
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