The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities schools the Tax Foundation over its so-called “Tax Freedom Day.”

New York Press makes a fitting choice to top its “50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers” – and it’s not as if there wasn’t competition:

FOR RUNNING AROUND the streets of Lower Manhattan without visibly crapping himself, Giuliani was elevated from the world’s most hypocritical goon to He-Man, Master of the Universe. Forget his violating federal handicap laws, his wars on rent control and community gardens, his refusal to test DNA rape kits until the five-year statute of limitations was up, or his corporate real estate giveaways—Rudy is now considered a Great and Heroic American Mayor. After office, Rudy wasted no time cashing in on his immaculately conceived new stature, riding into a post-mayoral sunset of private sector millions, five-figure lectures and flattering rumors about his political future in the GOP. It was toward this last end that Rudy came out in defense of Bush’s Ground Zero campaign ads last month. And why not? He’s co-chair of the Republican National Convention host committee, and the tragedy saved his sinking ass too.

From the Independent:

French electricity and gas workers went on strike yesterday, blacking out the street-lighting in Lille and other towns and pelting their Paris headquarters with light bulbs to protest against plans to “privatise” the industry. The government insisted that no such sell-off plans existed and that the state might even increase its 51 per cent stake in the power utilities as a result of restructuring plans. Nonetheless, more than half of the country’s 300,000 power workers went on strike to demand the withdrawal of plans announced on Wednesday to change the legal status of Electricité de France (EDF) and Gas de France (GDF) to limited companies. The dispute is a foretaste of the street battles that will probably confront the centre-right government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin as it tries to push ahead with economic and social reforms despite catastrophic losses in regional elections two weeks ago. It is, in particular, a baptism of fire for the new Finance Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy.

From the Times:

Thousands of demonstrators wearing black armbands marched through downtown streets [in Hong Kong] this afternoon in a peaceful protest to the Chinese government’s decision last Tuesday to limit further moves by this territory toward democracy. After a large but violent demonstration in Taipei on Saturday over an election dispute there, the rally here was another reminder of the strong democratic sentiments now bubbling around China’s periphery.

Organizers estimated that “more than 15,000” people participated in today’s march, while the police declined to provide a figure. The unexpectedly large turnout for an event scheduled just last Tuesday night and held in the middle of the four-day Easter holiday weekend was the latest sign of the growing politicization of a city once known for its preoccupation with material prosperity.

Garance Franke-Rutka on Condi Rice:

One of the most striking things about Condoleezza Rice’s testimony yesterday was the contrast between her self-assured appearance and the picture she sought to portray of herself as a woman too timid to take action without direction instruction and emotional encouragement

…the National Security Advisor repeatedly claimed that she had no affirmative leadership responsibilities during this time and was only obligated to act when others specifically told her to — a sort of “not my department” kind of excuse. She said on at least four separate occasions that she would have taken some action if only some one had told her to…

One wonders how this squares with the breathless accounts we used to hear about how Bush asked Condi to stay quiet in meetings – so that she could advise him about what to do afterwards…

The Yale Herald explores the tension between teaching and research in the academy, with some troubling quotes from Yale administrators in tow:

“The University is committed to the advancement of knowledge,” said History department Chair Jon Butler, who will assume the deanship of the Graduate School in the fall. “And the advancement of knowledge comes from scholarship—from research, as opposed to teaching…”Yale aims to be one of the premiere universities in the world and that by definition in America is a research oriented institution,” Butler said, describing the limitations of an exclusively teaching institution. “Teaching can be conceived as communicating knowledge but one can only be an excellent teacher and only communicate the knowledge that we already have. To do that you don’t need a university. There are many fine teaching institutions where faculty don’t make especially significant contributions to original knowledge.”

…Indeed, it is possible that an over-emphasis on research could come at the cost of the quality of teaching. An emphasis on achievements in research—reflected in the University’s hiring and tenure processes—can mean that outstanding teachers who are not great researchers are overlooked when up against brilliant researchers who are often horrible at teaching. “It’s possible that [the greater emphasis on research] could decrease the incentive for people to be good teachers,” Brackett said. “It makes sense that that could be a result, because if teaching isn’t weighed in too much then people aren’t going to care as much. I think that’s crazy, personally.”

Transient teachers at U. Michigan go on strike:

The 1,500-member Lecturers Employee Organization, which includes adjunct and visiting faculty, staged the walkout across U-M’s three campuses to draw attention to ongoing contract negotiations with the university. It is unclear exactly how many classes were canceled, but of 21 students interviewed inside or near the Michigan Union, 14 said they had had at least one class canceled. Many graduate student instructors – and some tenured professors – canceled classes to support the union…

Picket lines formed around some university buildings, like Angell Hall, at 6 a.m. They also greeted construction workers arriving to build the new undergraduate science complex and biomedical science research building. The union said workers responded by walking off the job for the day. U-M spokeswoman Diane Brown characterized the disruption as an “inconvenience.”

[redacted], [Journalist], and Drudge – oh my!

Turns out there’s one kind of business regulation the Bush administration is down with:

The Department of Agriculture refused yesterday to allow a Kansas beef producer to test all of its cattle for mad cow disease, saying such sweeping tests were not scientifically warranted. The producer, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wanted to use recently approved rapid tests so it could resume selling its fat-marbled black Angus beef to Japan, which banned American beef after a cow slaughtered in Washington State last December tested positive for mad cow…

The department’s under secretary for marketing and regulation, Bill Hawks, said in a statement yesterday that the rapid tests, which are used in Japan and Europe, were licensed for surveillance of animal health, while Creekstone’s use would have “implied a consumer safety aspect that is not scientifically warranted.”

God forbid anyone should imply concerns about consumer safety…

The Hartford Courant on the hypocrisy of Antonin Scalia:

This week, Justice Scalia addressed high school students in Hattiesburg, Miss., on the importance of protecting constitutional rights. During the event, a federal marshal told two news reporters that they could not record the justice’s remarks. There was no announcement on barring electronic recordings, but the justice simply did not want such coverage. The marshal erased the tape of an Associated Press reporter and directed a local newspaper reporter to delete her tape.

It is appalling that a jurist on the highest court in the land would try to dictate the terms of coverage of any public speech, let alone one in which he extolled the U.S. Constitution as “something extraordinary, something to revere.” Was he suggesting that a free press is fine, just as long as it does not apply to him and his speeches?

Lindsey Hilsum questions how much the international community has learned from the last Rwandan tragedy:

I was in Rwanda when the fighting began. It was clear at the time that rape was a tool of war. The majority of women who survived the Hutu attacks on Tutsis were gang-raped, sometimes for weeks on end, by the thugs who murdered their families. Many of them are now dying slow, painful deaths from AIDS. There are 7,800 confirmed cases, with estimates of as many as 14,000 undocumented women who are infected with the virus. (Today a total of 500,000 people, nearly nine percent of the adult population of Rwanda, is H.I.V. positive.)

…In fact, the United States Agency for International Development has selected prisoners convicted of participating in the genocide as a target group to receive counseling and testing as they return to the community. And the United Nations International Tribunal for Rwanda provides antiretroviral drugs to the prisoners accused of masterminding the slaughter. Similar programs on this scale simply do not exist for Rwanda’s rape victims.

David Corn on Condi’s testimony:

Her much-anticipated testimony to the panel investigating the 9/11 attacks overall was predictable. She vigorously defended herself, her administration and her boss from the charge that they had not assigned the al Qaeda threat sufficient importance prior to September 11. She could not bring herself to utter what Commissioner Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator, called “the m-word”–that is, “mistake.”…She repeatedly referred to “structural problems” that had long existed in the national security community as the primary reason for the failures–another word she did not mention once in her opening statement–that occurred on and before 9/11…the hearing produced information indicating that she and the Bush administration have not been straight with the public as they have attempted to convince America they were fully vigilant in the fight against al Qaeda prior to September 11.

This was particularly true of one of the main issues covered at the hearing: the Presidential Daily Briefing George W. Bush received on August 6, 2001, which included information on Osama bin Laden and hijackings. (PDBs are highly sensitive memos prepared by the intelligence community for the chief executive.) Rice’s handling of this dicey topic undermines her credibility…She did not say that she had been one of the first to mischaracterize this intelligence memo. But that is what the hearings showed.