You lost an hour of sleep. Feel free to make it up right now.
- Just remember: if you're a Democratic woman like Ashley Judd, it's legitimate for the Daily Caller to attack you for appearing topless on film. But if you're a Republican man like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Scott Brown, it's perfectly acceptable.
- And speaking of Ashley Judd, there are rumors that she is all but in for a Senate run against Mitch McConnell, but but she has denied them:
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Ashley Judd, the 44-year-old actress and social activist, has told key advisers and political figures that she is planning to announce her candidacy for U.S. Senate here this spring.
Judd told one close ally that she plans to announce her run for the Democratic nomination for the 2014 race “around Derby” -- meaning in early May when the Kentucky Derby brings national attention to Louisville and the Bluegrass State.
Reached for comment by email Saturday, Judd offered a not-quite-ironclad denial to The Huffington Post. “I am not sure who is saying this stuff, but it is not I! I’d prefer as a fan of your journalism that you stay accurate and credible. We told everyone who called us yesterday these stories are fabrications.”
I don't think there would be a more energizing 2014 campaign than this, if it happens.
- Some startling pictures of what Hollywood looked like 100 years ago. "Not the same" might be an understatement.
- The AP says that President Obama is on the verge of picking a new Secretary of Labor:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is poised to select Justice Department official Thomas Perez to be the next labor secretary, according to two people familiar with the deliberation process.
Perez' nomination to the Labor Department could come as early as Monday, the people familiar with the process said Saturday. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the official announcement has not yet been made. White House spokesman Matt Lehrich declined to comment.
Perez, 51, has led the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division since 2009 and previously served as Maryland's labor secretary. He is expected to have solid support from organized labor and the Hispanic community, which is eager to have Hispanic representation in Obama's cabinet.
- digby, on the topsy-turvy upside-down world that is Republicans who criticize Obama on drones:
This is why I don't truck too much in the hypocrisy argument on either side. Both parties are guilty of it, particularly in national security and foreign policy, which is interesting since the nation has been run on a bipartisan consensus on this pretty much for half a century. You see this playing out on both sides right now in which a few Democrats are tepidly speaking out against tactics in the covert war against terrorism, while some of the GOP's more aggressive, ambitious types are taking up the mantle of the ACLU. Meanwhile, John McCain (as he did during the Kosovo campaign) holds down the pro-military end on the right while the Democratic president and his allies in congress holds it down on the left. You'll see the same dynamic when a Republican is in the White House.
Perlstein's observation is more interesting: with the right, it's about the enemies and enemies are fungible. That's really the best way to understand them, I think.
Perlstein's point referenced by digby is that Republicans simply want to have an enemy and attack that enemy--and it doesn't matter who that enemy is.
- Doesn't Florida have enough trouble without these things?
One of the most ferocious insects you've ever heard of — it's the size of a quarter and its painful bite has been compared to being knifed — is set to invade Florida this summer.
The Sunshine State, already home to man-eating sinkholes, invading Burmese pythons, swarming sharks, tropical storms and other disasters, can expect to see an explosion of shaggy-haired gallinippers (Psorophora ciliata), a type of giant mosquito, according to entomologist Phil Kaufman of the University of Florida.
When the locusts hit, let us know.
- In their attempts to find out just who leaked information about Harvard University's cheating scandal, the school secretly searched staff emails:
The searches, first reported by The Boston Globe, involved the e-mail accounts of 16 resident deans, but most of them were not told of the searches until the last few days, after The Globe inquired about them. Resident deans straddle the roles of administrators and faculty members, teaching classes as lecturers while living in Harvard’s undergraduate residential houses as student advocates and advisers.
Because, why not?