The WonkLine: April 20, 2011

Vice President Biden said that NATO can fullfil the mission in Libya without U.S. help. “It is bizarre to suggest that Nato and the rest of the world lacks the capacity to deal with Libya – it does not,” he said.

“The Obama administration informed Congress on Friday that it is providing $25 million in nonlethal aid to Libya’s rebels.”

After Israel’s recent war in Gaza, U.S. ambassador to the UN Susan Rice led a campaign at the UN to stymie an investigation into Israeli war crimes as leverage to pressure Israel to participate in the peace process with the Palestinians.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that the only deficit reduction proposal with strong support is “President Obama’s call to raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans.”

President Obama yesterday “blamed speculators for driving gasoline prices higher and straining American consumers, saying there was enough oil in world markets to meet demand.”

In “one of the few successful prosecutions to come out of the financial crisis,” former mortgage lender Lee Farkas was convicted yesterday on 14 counts of “securities, bank and wire fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud.”

Education Week lays out why initiatives funded by the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program “have the potential to create lasting improvements in schools.”

An Idaho state senator broke with his fellow Republicans over new laws stripping teachers of their collective bargaining rights, saying that the laws should be repealed.

Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) said yesterday that “57 school districts in the state will be able to take part in a performance-pay program” for teachers.

A new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll shows that a majority of older Americans (51 percent of those 35 and older) favor marriage equality.

Details have emerged about the House’s legal contract to defend DOMA, including an adjustable $500,000 cap and a noticeable absence of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” in the nondiscrimination clause.

WATCH: PBS’s In The Life has produced a short clip about the “Injustice at Every Turn” faced by transgender and gender non-conforming Americans.

Energy companies appear poised to win big in a major global warming case before the Supreme Court.

Reproductive health groups are so terrified that the Supreme Court will overrule Roe v. Wade that they are not challenging a wave of anti-choice laws passed by conservative state lawmakers.

Florida Republicans want to make it really, really hard to vote.

“On the first anniversary of the BP oil well blowout,” U.S. Senators Mary Landrieu (D-LA.) and David Vitter (R-LA.), Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) and U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL) “have introduced four separate bills that would dedicate 80 percent of Clean Water Act fines to restore the Gulf Coast’s environment and economy.”

“We’re actually seeing Texas burn from border to border,” Texas Forest Service spokeswoman April Saginor told CNN Radio.

“Local extinction rates of American pikas have increased nearly five-fold in the last 10 years, and the rate at which the climate-sensitive species is moving up mountain slopes has increased 11-fold since the 20th century.”

President Obama told a gathering of business, labor, religious and political leaders at the White House that he remains committed to immigration reform and wants to push Congress to pass a bill in the coming months.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) complained that the White House snubbed her by leaving her off the guest list for a meeting about immigration reform.

The Mormon church clarified that it supports “measures that will allow those who are now here illegally to work legally, provide for their families, and become better contributing members of our community – but without establishing a path to citizenship or granting amnesty.

“Millions of seniors in private insurance plans offered through Medicare will be getting a reprieve from some of the most controversial cuts in President Obama’s health care law.”

“Republican legislatures across the country are passing tough new anti-abortion laws — and while abortion rights advocates believe the new laws are unconstitutional, they’re not rushing to court to stop them.”

The chairmen of the House Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce committees are “requesting that the president release a more detailed proposal” for how he would find $480 billion in Medicare savings in his deficit plan.

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