Sam Chi reports the Ann Arbor News is going online only, starting in July.

Kevin Rennie unearths another embarrassing nugget about Senator Dodd's connections with AIG:

From 2001-2004, Jackie Clegg Dodd served as an "outside" director of IPC Holdings, Ltd., a Bermuda-based company controlled by AIG. IPC, which provides property casualty catastrophe insurance coverage, was formed in 1993 and currently has a market cap of $1.4 billion and trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol IPCR. In 2001, in addition to a public offering of 15 million shares of stock that raised $380 million, IPC raised more than $109 million through a simultaneous private placement sale of 5.6 million shares of stock to AIG - giving AIG a 20% stake in IPC. (AIG sold its 13.397 million shares in IPC in August, 2006.)

Clegg was compensated for her duties to the company, which was managed by a subsidiary of AIG. In 2003, according to a proxy statement, Clegg received $12,000 per year and an additional $1,000 for each Directors' and committee meeting she attended. Clegg served on the Audit and Investment committees during her final year on the board.

IPC paid millions each year to other AIG-related companies for administrative and other services. Clegg was a diligent director. In 2003, the proxy statement report, she attended more than 75% of board and committee meetings. This while she served as the managing partner of Clegg International Consultants, LLC, which she created in 2001, the year she joined the board of IPC. (See Dodd's public financial disclosure reports with the Senate from 2001-2004 here.)

Dodd is likely more familiar with the complicated workings of AIG than he was letting on last week. This week may provide him with another opportunity to refresh his recollections.

You know things are bad when we are pouring billions upon billions into taxpayer funded subsidies to prop up the US auto industry (and its suppliers) but the socialist Swedes won't do the same to help save Saab.

Before the election, there was a lot of debate about whether Obama could change the politics of national security - taking measures that democrats traditionally favored (foreign aid, unilateral diplomacy, etc.) and making the public realize how essential they were to advancing America's interests.

It's not clear yet whether Obama can refashion those perceptions, but Rasmussen has some interesting numbers that suggest that Obama is getting kudos for the exercise of America's military power:

Sixty-one percent (61%) of U.S. voters agree with President Obama's decision to put more U.S. troops in Afghanistan.Twenty-five percent (25%) are opposed to putting more troops in the war-torn country, and 14% are not sure in a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Republicans are more supportive of the president's action than are members of his own party. Seventy-two percent (72%) of GOP voters support the decision to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, compared to 54% of Democrats. Sixty percent (60%) of voters not affiliated with either party agree.

What we've seen these past several weeks has belied the caricatures on the right and deflated some of the hopes on the left about how Obama would steer the ship of state. He's offered to reinvigorate diplomacy with Iran and Russia while proclaiming an end to the Iraq war, yet continues to rain Hellfire missiles down on al Qaeda in Pakistan and will surge additional forces to Afghanistan. This isn't so much redefining the politics of national security as muddying the waters.

(Cross-posted at RCW's The Compass.)

Here is video of Obama's "Nowruz" message to the Iranian people. Glenn Greenwald aprpoves. Laura Rosen reports that others do too. Iran gives it a thumbs-sideways.

Meanwhile, Ezra Klein gushes:

There are times when it's hard to believe that this is how my country acts now. That somewhere in government, some young bureaucrat had the idea that the President should publicly honor the Iranian New Year, and that bureaucrat felt that her superiors would also think this a good idea, and, indeed, the thought went all the way to the President, who agreed that a display of engagement and goodwill was consonant with our national values and foreign policy goals. It is hard to believe that five years after we were ordering "freedom fries" in the congressional cafeteria, we're posting Persian translations at Whitehouse.gov.

And Jules Crittenden smacks:

Speaking of reach-across, how come the mullahs get “mutual respect” and the GOP just gets Rush jokes?

President Obama's approval rating in the swing state of North Carolina remains largely unchanged from last month, a new PPP survey finds (March 12-15, 1000 RV, MoE +/- 3.1%). His 53%/40% approval rating is a two-point net approval increase from his 52%/41% rating last month.

Sen. Kay Hagan (D) has a 36% approval rating, with 34% disapproving and 30% not sure.

In November, Obama defeated John McCain by 1 point in North Carolina, which had voted Republican in each of the last seven presidential elections. Hagan defeated incumbent senator Elizabeth Dole by 9 points.

Guy Sorman at City Journal gives us the Navy's view on why it's necessary to patrol the Pacific:

How dangerous and unstable would Asia become without the Seventh Fleet? The Navy points to two different threats. The first is China, which has territorial claims against most of its neighbors. Taiwan comes immediately to mind, of course, but the Chinese government is also disputing ownership of the oil-rich Spratly Islands with Vietnam and the Philippines. If North Korea were to collapse, moreover, the Chinese Army could take over its territory before South Korea or the U.S. had time to intervene. China is building a very large deepwater fleet—the first in its history. (South Korea and Japan are similarly increasing their naval power.) Thus far, this Chinese fleet seldom moves far from China's territorial waters, something that surprises the Seventh Fleet leadership. The lack of a high-seas tradition, perhaps?The other peril comes from Islamic terrorism: a loose network of al-Qaida affiliates operating in East Java, northern Sumatra, the southern Philippines, and southern Thailand.

One of the conversations we're going to need to start having as China becomes more powerful is whether we're defending Pacific sea lanes for China or from China. Right now, it sounds like the latter. That's clearly going to become untenable as China's power grows.

Territorial disputes notwithstanding, China also benefits from global trade, and particularly trade with Japan and Taiwan. They have a strong interest in the free flow of goods through the Pacific, so the ideal situation is to have the U.S. Navy make room for a China that recognizes itself as a stakeholder in the current international system, and not as the vanguard of a new one. This would not only improve Pacific security, but defray its costs, which today are born exclusively by the U.S. taxpayer.

Of course, the Chinese may not be interested in a shared responsibility and may view Asia as an exclusive sphere. They may view U.S. policing efforts as containment measures - which will, in turn, invest their territorial disputes with new found geopolitical meaning. Then we're going to have to decide which of China's territorial claims are worth opposing with American blood and treasure.

(Cross-posted at RCW's The Compass.)

I found this humorous:

The president, a self-described basketball junkie, managed to only pick 11 of 16 games correctly--or 69 percent.

CBS 2 imported Obama's picks, which were originally made for ESPN, into its Bracket Challenge game. Currently, the president ranks in the 27th percentile among all players.

Several contestants managed to pick every game correctly. CBS 2 traffic reporter Susan Carlson, who admits to watching very little basketball, picked 15 of 16 games correctly.

I shouldn't laugh: even though I didn't fill out a bracket this year, historically my success at picking NCAA tourney games could easily be surpassed by my five year old daughter making picks based on which team she thought had the "prettiest" uniforms.

David Axelrod is very politically astute, which is why this comment is such a transparent piece of spin that is also terribly tone deaf:

Obama learned of the bonuses March 12, the day before they were paid out, from Axelrod, whom Geithner had briefed on the situation. The president was "aggravated" and "a little bit disbelieving," Axelrod said in an interview yesterday.

For the new administration, the bonuses were a distraction from what senior aides called the main focus: getting the economy working and people back to work. "People are not sitting around their kitchen tables thinking about AIG," Axelrod said. "They are thinking about their own jobs."

Americans are thinking about their jobs: why they are losing them while the jerks on Wall St. and in companies like AIG who created this mess not only still have theirs but are getting paid multimillion dollar bonuses to boot.

Facing a re-election campaign in 2010, Sen. Richard Burr's (R-N.C.) approval rating has dropped to 35%, with 32% disapproving and 33% not sure, according to a new PPP survey (March 12-15, 1000 RV, MoE +/- 3.1%).

The polling firm notes that Burr's numbers are worse than former Sen. Elizabeth Dole's (R-N.C.) at this point in her re-election campaign two years ago. Dole went on to lose to Democrat Kay Hagan by 9 points.

These poor numbers come as Democrats search for a candidate to challenge Burr. In this poll, PPP tested Sec. of State Elaine Marshall (D), who finished third in the 2002 Senate Democratic primary. Despite holding statewide office for years, more than 50% of respondents said they had no opinion of her.

Burr 43
Marshall 35
Und 22