Getting worse, but more slowly: “The economy continued to worsen across the United States in March and early April, amid scattered signs that the pace of the decline was lessening in some regions, the Federal Reserve reported Wednesday in its Beige Book account of the economy.’Overall economic activity contracted further or remained weak,’ the Fed said, based on reports from thousands of business sources across the country. ‘However, five of the 12 districts noted a moderation in the pace of decline, and several saw signs that activity in some sectors was stabilizing at a low level.'”

Some fairly interesting polling data: Obama is much more popular than his spending and bailout policies and there is a healthy majority that says after the crisis we should trim back government. Good luck with that.

What sort of news organizations agree to limit follow-ups on a controversal story with the affected cabinet official? CNN and MSNBC. Shameful.

Meanwhile a lot of people are upset with the DHS report. And Janet Napolitano has now been forced to apologize –sort of.

Riveting TV — the crowd talks back to CNN. Well it wasn’t on TV of course.

Obama’s spinners said they only covered up religious symbols at Georgetown to provide a consistent backdrop. Funny how that excuse didn’t work for John Ashcroft. If you go to a religious institution to garner praise for being a person of faith it seems unfair to strip that institution of its religious appearance, presenting it as indistinguishable from any other secular government stage. (And if he is embarrassed to be surrounded by religious symbols then don’t go.) What’s going to happen when he goes to Notre Dame?

Marty Peretz makes a good point about the Nikkei story on Iran’s possible transfer of enriched uranium to North Korea: “The details of this Nikkei story are especially intriguing.  And they put under deep doubt the reassuring hints from Secretary Gates and others that Tehran is quite far from completing the early stages of their nuclear design.”

President Sarkozy is already over Obama. All that fawning, so little to show for it.

One Congressional Democrat is very upset about the Homeland Security report going after “rightwing extremists” — which seem to include war vets and people who don’t like gun control. A complete fisking of this shoddy bit of propaganda dressed up as a homeland security report is here.

Alex Conant agrees with me that the tax man is cometh —  and not just for the rich.

Liz Mair makes a good point: it is easy to determine whether the Tea Party Protests are top-down organized or the product of real grassroots efforts. Just go online and look. The mainstream media reporters could do that to but it would require an hour or two of effort.

Perhaps the lamest spin ever by the White House: the president was “unaware” of the Tea Party demonstrators. Well, one was outside his home on Pennsylvania Avenue for starters. But maybe someone should get him a blackberry so he’s not so isolated, can follow New Media and communicate with people around the country. Oh, that’s right.

I think Karl Rove has it right: “Some liberals believe that the recession has made tax-and-spend issues passé. But political movements are often a reaction against aggressive overreach by those in power. Mr. Obama’s response to the financial crisis — a government power grab and budget explosion — has put spending and taxes back on the front burner. The tea parties are an early manifestation of that. More is sure to follow.” It is a separate question whether Republicans benefit from this. That depends on what policies they pursue and how effective they are in reclaiming the mantle of fiscal responsibility ( which frankly is easier out of power than in).

Did the mainstream media die yesterday? Well, they just ignored a fairly significant news story, according to the Christian Science Monitor: “They came to public squares and parks across the country by the hundreds and thousands on Tax Day, April 15, hoping for nothing less than a second American revolution. Their “tea parties” are part of a burgeoning national movement, they said – a nonpartisan wave of Americans outraged by Washington’s profligacy and its intrusion into every aspect of daily life.” But if the mainstream media can ignroe the success of the surge in Iraq for months and months they can certainly turn a blind eye to a single day of protests. (They are like the waiter who averts his eye when you are trying to get the check.)

When you are reduced to arguing that over whether the U.S. Senator/former Congressman whose ballot you challenged was really in DC on election day ( which is irrelevant to the right to vote by absentee ballot), then your ballot counting is likely not going well. And it is isn’t for Jim Tedisco.

It isn’t news that Joe Biden is flinty when it comes to charity. But is still irksome.

TNR catches Maureen Dowd whining. Well “catches” makes it sound hard — “remarks upon” would be more accurate. And she is worried Google will replace her? Maybe she should be worried about an op-ed writer who discusses policy rather than catty personal gossip column after column.

Reuel Marc Gerecht contends Obama does Muslim countries no favors by pussy-footing around hard issues of Islamic terrorism and human rights abuses: “Above all else, we need to understand clearly our enemies — to try to understand them as they see themselves, and to see them as devout nonviolent Muslims do. To not talk about Islam when analyzing al Qaeda is like talking about the Crusades without mentioning Christianity. To devise a hearts-and-minds counterterrorist policy for the Islamic world without openly talking about faith is counterproductive. We — the West — are the unrivalled agent of change in the Middle East. Modern Islamic history — including the Bush years — ought to tell us that questions non-Muslims pose can provoke healthy discussions.”