Again, I apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience. Watch this space today for more updates on timing.

* The total spent on the ad wars in Wisconsin has now topped $3 million, another sign that the state is ground zero in a continuing national war that both sides are now invested in for the foreseeable future.

* Scott Walker has done Obama an enormous favor by solving one of his most pressing reelection problems.

* Another state-level anti-union push? Michigan lawmakers are pushing a bill that would give the governor power to declare a species of "financial martial law."

* White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer boils down Obama's delicate balancing act on the economy: "The role of any president is to be optimistic about the future and realistic about the present."

* Why is it so hard for commentators to grasp the idea that voters care far more about jobs and unemployment than they do about cutting government for its own sake?

* Scott Shane does a nice job debunking some of the attacks on the Council on American-Islamic Relations that rang out at Pete King's hearings.

* Adam Serwer deftly skewers the conservatives who are smearing Keith Ellison for crying at yesterday's show trial, which they feel compelled to do because Ellison's emotional display was a "compelling rebuke to the entire premise of the hearings."

* David Axelrod keeps having fun with poor old Mitt Romney, this time claiming that Romneycare was a "template" for Obamacare.

* It is not "splitting hairs" to expect bold truth tellers like Chris Christie to tell the truth.

* Consistency watch: Sarah Palin, recently seen dismissing requests she tone down rhetoric to avoid violence as "blood libel," is now claiming that the rhetoric of "union thugs" may lead to violence.

* Millions sob hot tears as Blue Dog Dems who lost in 2010 shutter their campaign committees, a sign that they've given up on reentering politics.

* Michele Bachmann 2012! She plans to make multiple stops this weekend in New Hampshire, her husband and kids in tow.

* And a quick note to readers: Some time this weekend, this site and other Post blogs will be relaunched with a redesign and a revamped comments section that, I hope, you'll find more user friendly. It will allow you far greater flexibility in selecting the commenters you want to read and screening out ones you want to skip over. I hope you'll take the time to familiarize yourselves with the new format.

As a result of the transition, there may be a period some time tomorrow where comments will be temporarily disabled. I ask for your patience as we try to implement the changes. Feel free to email me with any problems you're having, and I'll do my best to stay in touch with you all.

What else is happening?

"Aggregation" can mean smart people sharing their reading lists, plugging one another into the bounty of the information universe. It kind of describes what I do as an editor. But too often it amounts to taking words written by other people, packaging them on your own Web site and harvesting revenue that might otherwise be directed to the originators of the material. In Somalia this would be called piracy. In the mediasphere, it is a respected business model.

The queen of aggregation is, of course, Arianna Huffington, who has discovered that if you take celebrity gossip, adorable kitten videos, posts from unpaid bloggers and news reports from other publications, array them on your Web site and add a left-wing soundtrack, millions of people will come.

Coming from someone with such a powerful position in journalism, this represents a remarkable level of dismissiveness towards the way millions and millions of people prefer to consume news these days. Keller's assault on "aggregation" likens it to a species of outright theft. In reality, smart aggregation is premised on the idea that people no longer believe (if they ever did) that A Single Authoritative And Almighty News Source is adequate to the task of telling them what information is "fit" for them to consume.

People who go to the Huffington Post or any other sight that aggregates content from multiple sources, including (gasp!) blogs, are In effect saying that the day-in-and-day-out editorial choices at these sites about what constitutes the important news of the day are more relevant and compelling to them than those of traditional news orgs like the Times -- even if these sites are informing them partly with content that's woefully inferior to that of the Paper of Record.

As for Keller's complaint about "packaging" content, the Huffington Post regularly sends huge amounts of readers to stories at other publications, including the Times itself. Indeed, just yesterday, HuffPo prominently linked to a great Times story debunking many of the claims of bold truth-teller Chris Christie. And when HuffPo or another aggregator "repackages" a Times story, the aggregator is generally quoting from that story and linking to it, which hardly seems like something that should be viewed as undesirable.

More broadly, Keller's attack completely discounts the fact that HuffPo writers do a great deal of original reporting that regularly moves the ball on major political stories. (Full disclosure: I am friendly with some of those reporters.) I know this, because I link to the fresh content they provide regularly in the course of aggregating on this blog. For some reason, those reporters have not yet figured out that they're being robbed blind.

The 14 Dems will join together and walk to the capitol Saturday in what amounts to a celebration of their "homecoming," senator Chris Larson said in an interview a few moments ago.

The move is meant to signal that even if Governor Scott Walker was able to push through his proposal rolling back bargaining rights, the Democrats' decision to return does not represent an acknowledgement of defeat. Instead, they're returning home to join the battle to recall the Republicans who supported Walker.

"Tomorrow all 14 of us will head to the capitol, where we're going to thank the people of Wisconsin for stepping up," Larson told me. "We'll be marching to the capitol -- it is a homecoming." Once at the capitol, the Dems will join a rally that's already been scheduled.

In another sign that national liberal groups are priming for a long recall fight, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee will announce today that they are opening an official recall campaign committee in the state.

"Recalls of the Republicans are kicking into high gear as clipboards begin to replace protest signs in neighborhoods across the state," Larson said in an email to PCCC supporters. "Governor Walker and Republican senators refused to listen to the public -- but now the people will be heard all across the state at the ballot box."

The question now remains whether labor, liberal groups and Wisconsin Dems can sustain momentum for the recall drives, now that the national media is largely treating the Wisconsin standoff as a dead issue. Nearly $2 million has poured in thus far from Dems around the country to support the recall drives, suggesting the Democratic base, at least, will remain intensely invested in the next chapter of this fight for some time to come.

The DC-based Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which supports Dem state government candidates around the country, is going up with a hard-hitting spot hammering Senator Luther Olsen for voting for "Walker's back-room deal to destroy collective bargaining":

The ad, which is slated to run for two weeks in the Green Bay market, is the first spot from the left that focuses on a particular senator, another sign that the recall drives are gaining momentum.

Indeed, a spokesperson for the DLCC, Carolyn Fiddler, says the group is likely to expand its buy to target other senators. "We expect to direct significant resources to the elections that may emerge in Wisconsin," Fiddler tells me.

The DLCC specifically chose Olsen because he had previously criticized Walker's proposal before voting for it. The ad, which seems to reflect a sense that Walker will continue to sink in popularity, says:

Last month, Senator Olsen said eliminating collective bargaining is, quote, "pretty radical." But Olsen voted for Governor Walker's backroom deal to end collective bargaining. Now Walker is pushing a budget that will devastate public schools and health care. And Senator Olsen refuses to stand up to the Governor.

The DLCC is a 527, which means it faces certain restrictions on political advertising, and this spot is framed as an issue ad: It doesn't mention the drive to recall Olsen. But the larger context is obvious: The recall drives are underway, and the spot signals that national Dems will have their back.

Nobody cares about the deficit. Why don't people understand this?

Matthew Yglesias attempts an answer:

Politicians don't understand that the voters don't care about the deficit because the voters themselves don't understand that they don't care about the deficit. Black, Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong, and I all believe that with unemployment high and interest rates and inflation low that a larger short-term deficit will help post real output and reduce unemployment. If most people agreed with that, then politicians would talk about the deficit in a different way.

But they don't. Public understanding of fiscal policy is hazy, inaccurate, and dominated by fallacious analogies between a national government and a household. What's more, voters believe that deficits are primarily driven by wasteful government spending. So when a recession strikes the deficit spikes, and people complain.

Not only are people too quick to believe that wasteful government spending is the primary cause of deficits, but in addition to this, people are reflexively susceptible to the idea that government spending and deficits are an impediment to economic recovery, and that if you sweep them away, a thousand economic flowers will suddenly bloom. After all, Americans have had this idea beaten into their heads by the right for decades now.

As Kevin Drum noted recently, one of the clearest signs of the triumph of conservative rhetoric is that people simply don't believe government can create jobs. Even worse, they're all too willing to believe the opposite -- that government and deficits are vaguely an obstacle to job creation.

And so, when pollsters ask people about the deficit during hard times, large numbers of them do in fact express generalized anxiety about it. Of course, when pollsters ask them what they care about more -- deficits or unemployment -- fewer cite the deficit, and far more cite unemployment. But that doesn't mean that people don't continue to link the two in their minds, and far too few Democrats want to take on the task of cutting that chain by trying to persuade folks that you can spend now to create jobs and then tackle the deficit later when times are better.

Instead, many of them opt for what they think is the easier route: Nodding along and saying that deficits are really bad and that we really must cut spending, but that we can't cut quite as deeply as conservatives want. This, of course, only risks reinforcing the conservative worldview, and risks making it harder, and not easier, to win the argument over the long term.

Al-Shabab/al-Qaeda in East Africa. In the summer of 2008, the Somali terror group al-Shabab formally merged with al-Qaeda, and last year released a video showing its fighters chanting "Here we are O' Osama. We are your soldiers O' Osama" and pledging to carry out jihad for him across the world.

Al-Shabaab's recruitment of at least twenty young Somali Americans in Minnesota is, indeed, alarming. The events in Minnesota and the FBI's success in establishing a relationship with the local Muslim community that helped them nab the recruiters would be a proper subject for a Homeland Security Committee hearing, unlike King's rhetorical indictment of the American Muslim community as a whole. In fact, it's one of the alternatives I suggested.

The problem with Thiessen's take is that, while al-Shabaab has pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden in an effort to gain al-Qaeda's support, they have not, in fact, "formally merged" with the group, nor have they taken on the name "al-Qaeda in East Africa." They are still wannabes. That's in part because of internal conflicts within the group -- as Brookings's Daniel Byman wrote last year, "Some parts of the organization cooperate with al Qaeda, with foreign jihadists playing leading roles in tactics and operations. But others within the movement -- probably the majority, in fact -- oppose the foreigners' control, with some even publicly condemning terrorism and even working with international humanitarian relief efforts."

A formal merger between al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda would be a huge deal, because, as Australian counterterrorism expert Leah Farrall, who authored a recent Foreign Affairs piece on al-Qaeda's franchise operations, explained to me, adoption of the franchise name is "usually done around the time of the franchise's first large-scale attack against Western interests -- as a sort of exercise in 'brand promotion.' Al-Shabaab is a heinous and brutal group -- but their activities have thus far been confined to East Africa. Farrall called Thiessen's statement that Al-Shabaab had merged with al-Qaeda "completely inaccurate."

Thiessen appears to be the only person using the term "al-Qaeda in East Africa" to refer to al-Shabaab. But his rhetorical excess in defense of a useless meta-hearing that yielded little in the way of understanding on the topic in question may be actively harmful. As Farrall wrote in an e-mail:

Any attempt to represent the group in this way before a formal merger took place would be rightly quashed in internal review processes that take place before the release of formal analytical product, not only because it is completely inaccurate and analytically misleading, but also because experts within government would also be aware that such a depiction would empower al Shabab in its campaign to join al Qaeda. In this respect, not only are Thiessen's comments inaccurate, they are also irresponsible.

It wouldn't be the first time a conservative commentator was overstating the influence of a terrorist group for political purposes. When underwear bomber Umar Abdulmutallab set himself on fire before being subdued by a group of unarmed airline passengers, conservatives rushed to portray the attack as "a success" for the terrorists rather than an  embarrassing failure. 

The irony is that al-Shabaab largely exists in its current form because of the misguided Bush-backed Ethiopian intervention in Somalia in 2006. As Matthew Yglesias wrote, that operation bred "a new generation of anti-American jihadists." It also helped breed them here. If Congress does hold hearings on domestic radicalization involving al-Shabaab's recruitment in Minnesota, it should probably consider that, too.

The move comes after Obama and Dems had effectively dared Republicans to make the first move on to politically treacherous terrain, and indeed, Ryan seemed to confirm the level of risk involved by claiming that Republicans are going to "lead with our chin."

* Senate Dems blame Obama for botching budget fight: Senate Dems are now blaming President Obama for the Dem caucus's failure to settle on a unified vision to counter that of Republicans, who continue to lure Dems deeper and deeper onto their own "must slash spending now" rhetorical turf.

* White House ceding the rhetorical game to GOP? Relatedly, Paul Krugman on how Obama and Dems are validating the GOP frame that immediate spending cuts are crucial, and how their failure to articulate an alternative vision "is aiding and abetting the dumbing down of our deficit debate."

* Dem governors slam Walker: Alex Burns reports that the Democratic Governors Association is out with a new video featuring footage of Republican governors distancing themselves from Walker, another reminder that even if Walker ends up prevailing in the short term, his overreaching approach has become politically toxic.

* Indeed, as GOP consultant Mike Murphy puts it, the "pounding" Walker took is likely to loom as a cautionary tale for other GOP governors.

* Cash continues to flow for Wisconsin recall efforts: In the 24 hours after the GOP maneuver, the Wisconsin Democratic Party raised over $350,000 for the drive to recall GOP senators.

* The legal case against Wisconsin GOP maneuver: Dems also hope to make the case that Wednesday night's rollback of bargaining rights was still "a fiscal bill," and therefore required 20 state senators to be present.

* Battle continues to spread in Wisconsin with boycotts now planned: Unions representing teachers, firefighters and cops will boycott a major state bank if it does not come out against the drive to roll back public employee bargaining rights, and they plan to target businesses who back Scott Walker.

* Labor's next fight could have major national ramifications: In Ohio, Republicans are pushing a bill that would curb bargaining rights for public employees, and labor stategists are planning to try to overturn it by referendum, energizing union households and the base in a swing state that could be crucial to Obama's 2012 reelection.

* Obama to push back on GOP's latest rendition of "drill, baby, drill": At his presser today, the President will push back on GOP critics who are blaming rising gas prices on his alleged blocking of energy production. The White House pushback: 2010 saw the biggest jump in domestic energy production since 2003; Obama has issued dozens of offshore drilling permits since the BP disaster.

* Claire McCaskill's political trip could undermine reelection: Senator McCaskill's spokesperson confirms to Ben Smith that the Senator billed and repaid taxpayers for a political trip on a private plane, a violation of Congressional ethics rules that could complicate an already tough reelection campaign.

* Obama's statement on Japan earthquake and tsunamis: Per the White House, Obama was notified of the disaster at 4 a.m. by chief of staff Bill Daley, and here's the President's statement:

"Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to the people of Japan, particularly those who have lost loved ones in the earthquake and tsunamis. The United States stands ready to help the Japanese people in this time of great trial. The friendship and alliance between our two nations is unshakeable, and only strengthens our resolve to stand with the people of Japan as they overcome this tragedy. We will continue to closely monitor tsunamis around Japan and the Pacific going forward and we are asking all our citizens in the affected region to listen to their state and local officials as I have instructed FEMA to be ready to assist Hawaii and the rest of the US states and territories that could be affected."

* NPR pushes back on James O'Keefe's latest sting: Newly released emails validate what NPR has been saying about not accepting any $5 million from any phony "Muslim group."

* In defense of NPR: Relatedly, Bill Moyers and Michael Wineship make the case that NPR's long history of fair journalism, including on the Tea Party, should not be tainted by a single episode involving "one of the sleaziest operatives ever to climb out of a sewer."

* And the takedown of the day, Michele Bachmann edition: Jonathan Bernstein absolutely eviscerates Bachmann's unhinged assertion of a $105 billion slush fund in the Affordable Care Act, a textbook example of how GOP politicians and conservative media collaborate "to create and spread false claims."

What else is happening?

* Sam Stein's reporting reveals the degree to which last night's events have raised the stakes in the recall fight astronomically for national labor.

* Steve Kornacki on why Russ Feingold has an outside shot at ousting Scott Walker in a recall election.

* The White House condemns yesterday's GOP maneuver in Wisconsin.

* Steve Benen has been tirelessly pointing out the Beltway's seemingly unshakable prioritization of the deficit over job creation, and today brought still more of the same.

* Good to see that Digby got a piece about those skewed deficit priorities published in the Hill, which is read by lots of Beltway insiders.

* If Washington centrists won't prioritize jobs, than liberal groups will: A coalition of them is now calling on Obama to put forth a serious job-creation plan.

* Jonathan Cohn takes a stab at debunking the GOP claim that defunding the Affordable Care Act will reduce the deficit.

* Your tax dollars at work: It's a good thing Pete King's Congressional hearings on Muslim radicalization spent so much time examining the wisdom of holding Congressional hearings on Muslim radicalization.

* The White House closely watched the hearings today out of nervousness that King's show trial could alienate the Arab world at a particularly sensitive moment for Mideast diplomacy.

* As Jonathan Capehart notes, it doesn't reflect particularly well on King that at his hearings the first Muslim American in Congress broke down in tears defending the patriotism of fellow Muslim Americans.

* Thursday comic relief: Sahil Kapur has an amusing, if somewhat dispiriting, rundown of the six dumbest things said at King's hearings today.

* Yes, King did say that "there are too many mosques in America."

* A former Wisconsin Attorney General says it's clear on its face that last night's GOP maneuver violated the state's open meeting law.

* Even if labor can't block the move in the courts, merely trying to do so will keep the story going and build more momentum for the recall drives.

* And Evan McMorris-Santoro finally finds something to unite left and right: Both agree that the Crossroads GPS ad attacking public employees is bogus.

What else is happening?

The premise of the hearing was flawed from the beginning, focused broadly on the "Muslim community" rather than an infinite number of more specific issues related to domestic radicalization -- and, as a result, it didn't offer much in the way of policy guidance and left the impression that Muslims in America are an issue to be concerned about, rather than terrorism itself. To the extent that the hearings were, in the words of former Bush national security official Matthew Levitt, "semantically shaped to point a finger at an entire community," they may have been actively counterproductive.

But while there were some embarrassing moments from a few Republicans warning about the "danger of sharia law to the U.S. Constitution," the withering criticism from Democrats, civil liberties groups, and religious organizations in advance of the hearing seemed to put legislators on their best behavior. King had even removed two controversial witnesses with histories of anti-Muslim remarks prior to the hearings actually taking place.

Both King and one of his witnesses, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, backed down from previous unsubstantiated remarks alleging that most American mosques were radicalized. That's important, because even anti-Muslim activists assumed that the plan was to filter conservative generalizations about Islam through Muslim spokespeople. Republican legislators prefaced their remarks carefully by stating that the vast majority of American Muslims were peaceful and law abiding, and that it was not the religion of Islam that was the problem. This approach was not a foregone conclusion given King's history of inflammatory generalizations about Islam, and the manufactured sharia panic sweeping state legislatures.

L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca, who had been called by Democrats, deftly punctured the myth that Muslims refuse to cooperate with law enforcement. The Council on American Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group that has been longtime target of conservatives because they were listed as unindicted co-conspirators in a terrorism financing case, was mentioned more times than any actual terrorist group at the hearing. When Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.) accused Baca of "dealing with a terrorist organization," because CAIR's LA chapter had supported Baca's outreach efforts, Baca pushed back hard, saying "If the FBI has any charges against CAIR, let the FBI bring them. You have facts, and you have a crime. Deal with it."

If Republican legislators who deployed restraint are willing to tell their own base that Muslim Americans are not the enemy, the hearings may ultimately have a net positive effect on the audience most in need of seeing Muslims playing a positive role -- conservatives themselves. As Greg noted the other day, more than two-thirds of those who identify with the Tea Party movement see Islam as violent.

The framing of the hearings was still wrong, implying that radicalization is a widespread problem in the American Muslim community. In fact, it is the definition of a miniscule -- if still very serious--problem. As Adam Rawnsley reported, American Muslims who have participated in terrorist attacks are between "0.007 to 0.006 percent" of the population. While legislators in the hearing itself emphasized the patriotism and moderation of the American Muslim community, the way the hearing was set up still leaves one with the impression that the Muslim community is a problem to be solved.

Conservatives will be eager to argue that the outcome of the King hearings shows that all of his critics were overreacting in worrying about American Muslims being singled out as a group. Again, given the avalanche of anti-Muslim laws being proposed by Republican state legislatures, and the rhetoric of many conservative leaders, I don't think that's true.

But as Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorist Radicalization at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies put it to me yesterday, conservatives have every reason to empathize. "Many conservatives would absolutely have a fit if there were such hearings on right-wing extremism, just as they had a rather unjustifiable fit following DHS's controversial intelligence assessment on right-wing extremism," Gartenstein-Ross said. "The fact that conservatives felt so personally slighted by that report shows why they should be at least sympathetic to Muslims' real concerns in this instance."

King's hearings did not devolve into a circus or a witch hunt, and it's fair for King to point that out. A hearing holding American Muslims collectively responsible for terrorism was very clearly what some segment of the right wanted. But if outside groups hadn't been so critical of King and Republicans to begin with, it might not have played out that way.

The general sense I'm picking up in labor circles today is that people are pessimistic that there will be a legal way to block what happened last night. On the other hand, Dem and labor strategists think it's worth a shot. Kicking up as much noise as possible about potential illegalities will keep the story in the news and help feed the impression that Republicans subverted democracy last night -- an impression that can only help recall efforts.

Readers -- especially lawyers among you -- please let me know what you think of the complaint's merits.

It seems to me that the system worked. Democrats were able to slow the process down and convince both voters in Wisconsin and the national media that there was something beyond business as usual happening in Madison. National and state polls show they were successful in that effort. Walker and the Senate Republicans ignored the Democrats' attempts at compromise and ignored the public turning against them and decided to pass the legislation anyway.

That was their prerogative, and now it's up to the voters to decide whether to recall the eight Senate Republicans who are eligible for judgment this year, and to defeat Walker and the other Republicans in a year or two, when they become vulnerable to a recall election. That's how representative democracy, for better or worse, works. The representatives can make unpopular decisions, but the voters can punish them for it.

I've been getting a lot of angry emails from conservatives who are saying: How dare those Wisconsin Democrats and labor thugs pursue the recall of Republicans, given that they were legitimately elected by Wisconsin voters to get the state's fiscal house in order! It doesn't seem to matter to these good people that poll after poll after poll shows that those very same voters wanted Scott Walker and state senate Republicans to compromise with labor and Dems, or that big majorities oppose the rollback of public employee bargaining rights.

So, yes, Walker and the Republicans were elected to do what they think, or claim to think, is the right thing for the state. They are forging ahead with their agenda even though Wisconsinites are voicing strong opposition to it. Fine. The very same democratic system that allows them to do this also provides for voters to declare buyer's remorse and toss them out of office before their terms are up.

If what Walker and Republicans did is a sufficient turnoff to voters that the required number sign on for recall elections, and if those voters then replace these Republicans with Democrats, it will have been every bit as democratic as their election in the first place. In Wisconsin, recalls are democratic.

I've got an advance look at some new polling by Survey USA that finds solid majorities in two GOP senate districts support the recall of their senators. The poll was paid for by MoveOn, which obviously has an ax to grind in this fight, but Survey USA is a respected non-partisan pollster that's routinely cited by major news organizations.

Here are the numbers, sent over by a MoveOn official, in the districts of GOP senators Dan Kapanke and Randy Hopper.

When asked if they would vote for Hopper or someone else if a recall election were held right now, 54 percent said they'd vote for someone else, versus only 43 percent they'd vote for Hopper.

In Kapanke's district, the numbers were even worse: 57 percent said they'd vote for someone else, versus only 41 percent who said they'd vote for Kapanke.

It gets even more interesting. The poll was taken yesterday, before last night's events, and fifty-six percent of voters in Kapanke's district, and 54% of voters in Hopper's district, said if their Senator voted for Walker's plan, it would make them more likely to vote for someone else. Last night, both Senators did vote for Walker's rollback of bargaining rights.

Survey USA surveyed 400 voters in the district of each Senator. In fairness, this poll asks people to choose between their senator and an unnamed opponent, when in reality they would face a real live human being in a recall election. But this is how recalls work: First support needs to be built up for the recall of an official, and once the key procedural hurdles are surmounted, someone steps up in the role of challenger and is nominated by the opposing party in what is effetively a special election.

This poll suggests that in two districts at least, support for recall is already there, which is a good gauge of the intensity of grassroots anger at Wisconsin Republicans and will only give momentum to efforts to gather the signatures required to make the recalls happen.

UPDATE, 11:34 a.m.: A MoveOn official adds that the organization has already raised over $800,000 to support the recall drives against GOP senators.