In the race for governor of Texas, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R) holds a substantial lead over Gov. Rick Perry (R) in a matchup of potential 2010 primary foes, according to a new poll from PPP (Feb. 18-20, 797 GOP LV, MoE +/- 3.5%).

Texas Gov Republican Primary
Hutchison 56
Perry 31

Hutchison has all but formally announced she's challenging Perry. She set up an exploratory committee in December and recently hired a communications director -- Hans Klingler, the current political director of the Texas GOP and the former political director on Perry's 1998 campaign for lieutenant governor, the Austin American-Statesman reports.

Perry took over George W. Bush in December 2000 and was elected governor in 2002 and 2006.

Another poll, this one from CBS News/NY Times, shows Obama with a 63% job approval rating, which is a one-point increase from the last CBS News poll taken Feb 2-4. However, those who disapprove of the job Obama is doing as president has jumped from just 15% three weeks ago to 22% today.

Unlike other polls which show Obama's job approval rating adversely influenced by an increased dissatisfaction among Republicans, the CBS/NYT poll shows that the rise in Obama's disapproval looks to be primarily driven by Independents. Three weeks ago only 12% of Independents disapproved of the way Obama was handling his job. In the current poll the number is 30%.

Disapproval among Republicans has ticked up marginally from 36% three weeks ago to 38% today, while approval for Obama increased among Republicans to 44% currently from 36% in the last poll.

Overall, then, in the past three weeks the CBS/NYT poll shows a 6-point net gain in approval for Obama among Republicans but a 22-point net loss in approval among Independents.

A new national survey from ABC News/Washington Post shows Obama with a 68% approval rating after his first month on the job, which puts him in the middle of the pack historically.

According to the poll, 4 presidents rate below Obama (Bush II, 55%; Nixon , 60%; Clinton, 63%; and Eisenhower, 67%), Ronald Reagan received the exact same rating, and three rate higher (Carter, 71%; Kennedy, 72%; and Bush I, 76%).

Overall, Obama's job approval in the RCP Average stands at 63.0%.

Amy Siskind writes a thought-provoking piece on the recent honor-killing in Buffalo that includes a grim statistic:

Aasiya was allegedly murdered by her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, on February 12 at his place of business, the Bridges TV station in a Buffalo suburb. Aasiya had filed for divorce and obtained an order of protection on February 6 against her husband. So why the international attention to the murder of Aasiya? After all, sadly, this type of tragedy is hardly unusual in our country, where each and every day three or more women are murdered by their husband or boyfriend. In fact, statistics tell us that in the ten days since Aasiya died, 30 or more women in America have been murdered by their husband or boyfriend. The attention on this case comes as a result of the gruesome way in which Aasiya was murdered—torture and then decapitation—and what a beheading symbolically means.

As if to prove Suskind's point, witness this headline in today's Chicago Sun-Times:

Man charged in murders of Eddy Curry's ex, daughter
Chicago lawyer Fredrick D. Goings was charged Sunday with fatally shooting Nova Henry and her 9-month-old daughter, Ava --the child of New York Knick Eddy Curry -- after police reviewed hours of surveillance tape and forensic evidence that they say links Goings to the crime scene.

Curry's 3-year-old son with Nova Henry, Noah, was found bloody but unharmed when Henry's mother discovered the bodies Jan. 24 at their Near South Side condo. [snip]

Goings, 36, had a prior romantic relationship with Henry, 24, and represented her in a paternity case against Curry. Ava's birth certificate recorded her surname as Goings.

The slayings were "domestic-related," police said. Henry let Goings in, and an argument happened, officers said. He faces two counts of first-degree murder and is to appear today in Bond Court.

The two cases are not that far apart in the details: both involved a husband/boyfriend who brutally murdered his wife/girlfriend.  And Suskind's point is surely true: if a man is intent upon committing violence against a woman - up to and including murder - there is precious little our laws can do about it.

But there is also a massive distinction between the two cases. Clearly, there are parts of the Islamic world that continue to tolerate such gruesome violence against women as a matter of religious culture, while the West does virtually everything in its cultural power to stigmatize violence directed toward women in an effort to prevent such behavior (just ask Chris Brown). Comparing all the statistics in the world can't obscure that difference.

Lately, there has been a lot of discussion of the moral aspect of anti-crisis measures that, in effect, allow people to get away with bad or at least irresponsible behavior -- specifically, bailing out homeowners who took out mortage loans they couldn't realistically afford.  Today's New York Times has letters in response to a David Brooks column on the topic.  Says Brooks:

The financial bailouts reward bankers who took insane risks. The auto bailouts subsidize companies and unions that made self-indulgent decisions a few decades ago that drove their industry into the ground. The stimulus package handed tens of billions of dollars to states that spent profligately during the prosperity years. The Obama housing plan will force people who bought sensible homes to subsidize the mortgages of people who bought houses they could not afford. It will almost certainly force people who were honest on their loan forms to subsidize people who were dishonest on theirs.

Unfair?  Maybe, says, Brooks, but necessary for the greater good of all:

[G]overnment isn't fundamentally in the Last Judgment business, making sure everybody serves penance for their sins. In times like these, government is fundamentally in the business of stabilizing the economic system as a whole. ... Individual responsibility doesn't mean much in an economy like this one. We all know people who have been laid off through no fault of their own. The responsible have been punished along with the profligate. It makes sense for the government to intervene to try to reduce the oscillation. It makes sense for government to try to restore some communal order.  ...

.... To stabilize that communal landscape, sometimes you have to shower money upon those who have been foolish or self-indulgent. The greedy idiots may be greedy idiots, but they are our countrymen. And at some level, we're all in this together. If their lives don't stabilize, then our lives don't stabilize.

A letter-writer from Iowa agrees:

Many of us have done nothing wrong. Some are still renting because we were too responsible to buy a house we could not afford while others struggle to faithfully pay for ones they could.

The foolish should not have taken on mortgages they had no realistic possibility of paying. But reality is not what should have been, nor is it what we wish for. Reality is only what currently is.

If the foolish go under in droves, the wise and responsible will quickly follow. In saving them, we also save ourselves.

True enough.  The purely libertarian/Ayn Randian solution of leaving everyone to face the consequences of their  poor choices runs into several major obstacles.  One is that, as Brooks argues, because the economy makes us all interdependent, the innocent would sink along with the guilty.  (And that's not even to mention people -- including children -- who will suffer for bad or foolish choices made by a family member.)    Another is that standing by while large numbers of people "sink" for their reckless or self-indulgent decisions (again, often along with innocent family members) will either severely demoralize society or breed callousness.

There is, however, an alternative to letting the foolish and reckless go under -- taking a few of the wise and responsible down with them -- or forcing other, more responsible people to pay for their folly.

Provide the assistance -- but in the form of loans. Let the people, companies, and states on the receiving end of taxpayer-funded rescue repay the money later, when they're back on their feet.  At low interest.  Or even zero interest.   But there should be no such thing as a free bailout.

(Cross-posted to The Y-Files.)

For his comments about Justice Ginsburg. Kyle Trygstad has the deets.

Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, the JOA that runs the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and the shared online portal philly.com, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday, becoming the fourth newspaper holding company to do so in the last three months.

The company is seeking to restructure its $390 million in debt, brought upon in part by the downturn in advertising over the last year. The company apparently had been in negotiations with its creditors for 11 months but was unable to reach a settlement.

A day earlier, the Journal Register Company, which owns 20 small dailies in the Philadelphia and Cleveland areas as well as in Michigan, filed for bankruptcy to seek relief from its debt of over $1 billion. That came after the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, also filed for bankruptcy in January and December, respectively.

Two other papers' fates likely will be determined next month: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Rocky Mountain News were both put up for sale by their respective parent companies as a formality in December. If no buyer is found - and so far there hasn't been any interest - the papers would cease publication before the end of March.

The P-I's staff is meeting Tuesday to discuss a proposal that would allow the employees to buy out the paper and save it from extinction. The P-I's rival Seattle Times, itself in severe financial distress, is lobbying Washington State lawmakers to reduce business tax levied on newspapers.

Cross posted at RCP's Media Watch.

In the fall of 2008, we were treated to a number of serious warnings from folks like Andrew Bacevich and Daniel Larison regarding the Bush administration's air war in Pakistan. Later, Petraeus advisor and counter-insurgency guru David Kilcullen chimed in saying that such strikes were "totally counter-productive."

Yet there have been a number of revelations in the past few weeks that put these strikes in a new light. First, we learned from Sen. Feinstein that Predator missions are being flown out of a base inside Pakistan (so much for violations of sovereignty). Next, we learn that the U.S. has targeted the militant group Baitullah Mehsud at the behest of the Zardari government. Today we learn in the New York Times that the Pakistani military has been receiving covert training from the U.S. to create an elite counter-terrorism force.

Throughout all these revelations runs the persistent thread that the government in Pakistan, whatever it says publicly, is very much on board with America's military campaign on its territory. This puts critics of this campaign in the odd position of being more concerned about the stability of Pakistan than the actual government of Pakistan. And unlike the Musharraf regime, the current government has a degree of democratic legitimacy.

This doesn't make American military action inside Pakistan any less problematic. Zardari could be miscalculating and popular unrest over military action could very well bubble over. But it could be that Pakistan has decided that U.S. military action inside their country is the worst possible option - except for all the others.

Pakistan is a microcosm of a persistent balancing act between those willing to risk short-term insecurity in pursuit of longer term goals, and those unwilling to live with short-term insecurity for the prospect of longer term gain. Those who caution against military strikes inside Pakistan are willing, in essence, to let senior al Qaeda leaders live. They insist that the continued air strikes will ultimately destabilize Pakistan, and that the security issues surrounding a destabilized Pakistan would dwarf whatever threat these al Qaeda leaders pose. Others (including both the Bush and, apparently, the Obama administrations) err on the side of short term security on the notion that while we can't know for sure what Pakistan's trajectory will be, we do know for certain that select individuals pose a direct threat to the U.S.

And despite confident assertions on all sides, no one really knows where the right balance is.

Visit RealClearWorld for more international commentary and news.

Uh oh. Alex Rodriguez's story begins to unravel. Better keep checking RealClearSports throughout the weekend for the latest, because it seems like there's surely more to come.

The New York Post has issued somewhat of an apology for the cartoon about the chimpanzee earlier this week which set off a ruckus as being racist.  Here's the full statement:

Wednesday's Page Six cartoon - caricaturing Monday's police shooting of a chimpanzee in Connecticut - has created considerable controversy.

It shows two police officers standing over the chimp's body: "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," one officer says.

It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill.

Period.

But it has been taken as something else - as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism.

This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.

However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past - and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.

To them, no apology is due.

Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon - even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.

I think the Post is right to apologize for not foreseeing the reason some would take offense, but I can certainly understand the anger and frustration the paper's editors feel over being branded racists. I'd be surprised if I could find a single person who couldn't relate an experience where they said or did something and totally missed the implication of how others might interpret their words or actions, even if it seemed obvious with hindsight.

We also have the New York Times issuing a "note to readers" - not to be misinterpreted as a correction or an apology, mind you - for the first time in the paper's history as part of a settlement the paper reached with lobbyist Vicki Iseman after she sued the paper for it's February 21, 2008 front page story about her relationship with John McCain.

The Times statement says, "the article did not state, and The Times did not intend to conclude, that Ms. Iseman had engaged in a romantic affair with Senator McCain or an unethical relationship on behalf of her clients in breach of the public trust."

Meanwhile, NYT Executive Editor Bill Keller said that, “The McCain campaign and some of its supporters set out aggressively to portray the article in question as a story about an unsubstantiated affair,” Keller wrote. “But it was not that, either explicitly or implicitly.”

I'd love to say it more delicately, but this is all a load of shit. The first two paragraphs of the article in question read:

WASHINGTON — Early in Senator John McCain's first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client's corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman's access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

How Bill Keller can characterize those paragraphs as not being "explicitly or implicitly" about an unsubstantiated affair is beyond me. Just because the Times writers hid the accusation of an extramarital affair behind the shield of anonymous "top advisors" does not in anyway absolve them of not only including it in the piece but making it the hook.

Keller is far too smart to not understand that he's being insultingly disingenuous with his comment and by the note to readers issued by his paper.