You might possibly have spotted – and you might not – a shiny new blog roll link in the sidebar on the right. It’s still a work in progress, but I just thought it might be handier to have a dedicated page of links to sites we love, rather than having them half way down the page in the sidebar.
Any way, just wanted to ask you all if you have any suggestions for links I should add to the list? Non-Firebagger sites, needless to say, and whatever other newsie places you think are worth including.
Thank you!
Meanwhile, ginormous thanks to UT, LL and LovelyPlains for their splendiferous posts today.
President Obama with South Korean President Park Geun-Hye in the Oval office today – Photo by Pete Souza
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U.S. President Barack Obama and South Korean President Park Geun-hye in Bi-lateral meeting
President Obama thanked President Park, who is South Korea’s first female president, for choosing the United States for her first foreign trip. This visit “reflects South Korea’s extraordinary progress over these six decades,” President Obama said, from “the ashes of war, to one of the world’s largest economies; from a recipient of foreign aid to a donor that now helps other nations develop.”
Greg Sargent: “Senate Democrats believe that they have several new votes in favor of a bill that would expand background checks for gun buyers, after weeks in which those who opposed the legislation faced strong political backlash at home. One of these votes currently in play may be Senator Johnny Isakson, who sponsored a background check bill on the state level in Georgia. A gun control advocate who met with Senator Isakson today tells me that he said he is open to voting for Manchin-Toomey if and when it comes up again — and that he is in active talks with Senator Joe Manchin about the measure.
To be sure, this is very little grounds, by itself, for hoping for future passage of Manchin-Toomey. After all, Dems need to flip five senators to break the GOP filibuster. But it is clear that Dem leaders really do want to hold another vote, that conversations are continuing, and that a few senators may be open to changing their stance. This will only encourage the gun reform forces to keep up the pressure, which is key.
You should've seen the disciples faces when I turned water to weed. #figurethatoutscience
— Jesus Christ Edge Lord Parody & Savior (@Jesus_M_Christ) May 3, 2013
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Gomez (R-MA): "I demand Ed Markey stop reminding voters I'm the lying bastard who tried to swiftboat Obama in 2012. That's ancient history"
— Subscribe to Unprecedented on Ghost - no paywall! (@TheDailyEdge) May 7, 2013
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Dylan Matthews: Robert Rector and Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation have made a splash by releasing a paper claiming that the immigration reform bill being weighed in the U.S. Senate will cost the government $5.3 trillion. Or, more precisely, that undocumented immigrants under current law will cost the government $1 trillion, and legalizing those immigrants will increase that to $6.3 trillion. Subtract one from the other and you get the $5.3 trillion total cost estimate.
So does the Heritage estimate hold up? Not really. They make a lot of curious methodological choices that cumulatively throw the study into question. It’s likely that immigrants would pay a lot more in taxes, and need a lot less in benefits, than Heritage assumes, and that other benefits would outweigh what costs remain. the best study we have on the fiscal effects of immigration reform, from the CBO, finds the impact to be minimal or positive. But the Heritage numbers simply are not credible.
The Obama Diary 
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