memeorandum: Too Heavy a Hand — AFTER defeating the Taliban dictatorship … (Richard Perle/New York Times)

4:25 AM ET, March 17, 2008

Top Items:

JPMorgan Acts to Buy Ailing Bear Stearns at Huge Discount — Bear Stearns, facing collapse because of the mortgage crisis, agreed Sunday evening to be bought by JPMorgan Chase for a bargain-basement price of less than $250 million, the two companies announced.

Discussion: Gothamist, Crooked Timber, Matthew Yglesias, Political Byline, Buck Naked Politics, Taylor Marsh, JustOneMinute, Obsidian Wings, Hoffmania!, Marginal Revolution and AMERICAblog

Wall Street Journal:

Bear Stearns Closes in on Deal To Sell Itself to J.P. Morgan — Bear Stearns Cos. was closing in on a deal Sunday afternoon to sell itself to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., as worries deepened that the financial crisis of confidence could spread if Bear failed to find a buyer by Monday morning.

Discussion: Business Wire, The Age, New York Times, Portfolio, DealBook, Eschaton, Bloomberg, Economist's View, Grasping Reality …, The Big Picture, Emptywheel, HorsesAss.Org, The Agonist and Reason Magazine

Matthew Yglesias:

Sunday Financial Meltdown Blogging — Every now and again, and then increasingly as things start looking worse, I get a comment like “how can you write about [thing that's not earth-shatteringly important] when the economy is [something terrible happening in the economy].”

Discussion: Brendan Nyhan

Scott Lanman / Bloomberg:

U.S. Fed Cuts Discount Rate, Says Dealers May Borrow — The Federal Reserve, in an emergency weekend decision, cut the rate on direct loans to commercial banks and opened up borrowing at the rate to primary dealers in government securities. — In an announcement before the start of trading …

Discussion: Jay Currie, Oliver Willis and Hullabaloo

Edmund L. Andrews / New York Times:

Fed Acts to Rescue Financial Markets — WASHINGTON — Hoping to avoid a systemic meltdown in financial markets, the Federal Reserve on Sunday approved a $30 billion credit line to engineer the takeover of Bear Stearns and announced an open-ended lending program for the biggest investment firms on Wall Street.

Discussion: ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES and Angry Bear

Paul Krugman / New York Times:

The B Word — O.K., here it comes: The unthinkable is about to become the inevitable. — Last week, Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary, and John Lipsky, a top official at the International Monetary Fund, both suggested that public funds might be needed to rescue the U.S. financial system.

Discussion: Corrente

Megan McArdle:
Sold! — So JP Morgan has agreed to buy Bear Stearns at $2 a share.

Discussion: Bloomberg and Obsidian Wings

Larry Kudlow / The Corner:
JP Morgan Chase + Bear Stearns

Discussion: The Volokh Conspiracy

Gretchen Morgenson / New York Times:
Rescue Me: A Fed Bailout Crosses a Line

Discussion: The Democratic Daily, Balkinization, DownWithTyranny!, The Huffington Post, Greg Mankiw's Blog, Grasping Reality … and The New Republic

Mike Allen / The Politico:

Obama's church accuses media of character assassination — The Chicago church attended by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) issued a statement Sunday contending that coverage of his pastor's inflammatory remarks amounted to character assassination and “an attack on ... the history of the African American church.”

Discussion: NewsBusters.org, Wake up America, Hot Air, Gateway Pundit, The Sundries Shack, Donklephant, Political Byline and PoliGazette

Tom Maguire / JustOneMinute:

Oprah, Obama, And Wright — It has been reported that Oprah Winfrey, who endorsed Obama, is the other famous member of Wright's now controversial church. However, she seems to have moved away from that church quite some time ago - this is from 2002: … I wonder what Oprah would say about the direction Wright's ministry took.

Chicago Tribune: Obama prepares for full assault on Clinton

Ben Smith / Ben Smith's Blogs:
Clinton aides deplore negativity

Discussion: The Democratic Daily, AMERICAblog, Hoffmania!, marbury and The Swamp

Marc Ambinder:
An “Attack” On The Church — CBS News's John Bentley spent Palm Sunday …

Discussion: TalkLeft, The Other McCain and Ben Smith's Blogs

New Jersey Online:

McGreevey aide says he had sexual trysts with ex-governor, wife — A former aide to James E. McGreevey said today that he had three-way sexual trysts with the former governor and his wife before he took office, challenging Dina Matos McGreevey's assertion that she was naive about her husband's sexual exploits.

Discussion: Gawker, Gateway Pundit, Gothamist, New York Post, JunkYardBlog, Pam's House Blend, Political Byline and The Other McCain

Allahpundit / Hot Air:

Video: Juan Williams lowers the boom on Obama — By special request of Ace, who tells me his commenters were buzzing about it this morning. Williams has never had much patience for grievance culture so this shouldn't surprise. He's juggling a lot of balls here — the “authenticity” …

Discussion: Little Green Footballs, American Power and Perfunction

Michelle Gallardo / WLS-TV:

Obama answers questions about Rezko, pastor — No campaign stops were scheduled Sunday for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. He was in the Chicago area Saturday night for a fundraiser. — The Illinois senator was in an Indianapolis suburb also this weekend, where he …

Discussion: EconoPundit

Sweetness & Light:
Pastor Wright Erased From Obama's Website

Discussion: NewsBusters.org, The Corner, The Jawa Report, JustOneMinute, Stop The ACLU and AMERICAN DIGEST

Little Green Footballs:
Obama Web Site ‘Disappears’ Radical Pastor

Discussion: The Corner, Stop The ACLU and Don Surber

Think Progress:

One Year Later, Market Where McCain Strolled ‘Freely’ Is Controlled By Sadr, Too Unsafe For Americans To Visit — On April 1, 2007, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) strolled through the open-air Shorja market in Baghdad in an effort to prove that Americans are “not getting the full picture” of what's going on in Iraq.

Discussion: The Daily Dish, Crooks and Liars, The Seminal, Hullabaloo, The Newshoggers, Associated Press, New York Times, Angry Bear, DownWithTyranny! and Political Byline

New York Times:
Iraqis See a Candidate's Agenda in McCain's Visit

Discussion: AMERICAblog

Scott Horton / Harper's:

The Gathering Storm at Justice — I don't in the ordinary course review and recommend law review articles, but I've just come across one that is close to indispensable for public affairs junkies. On December 7, 2006—the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor—at least eight U.S. attorneys …

Gallup:

Gallup Daily: McCain at 47% to Obama's 44% — PRINCETON, NJ — The latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking update on registered voters' general election preferences for president finds that John McCain has opened up a slight advantage over Barack Obama, 47% to 44%, while McCain and Hillary Clinton remained tied at 46% each.

Discussion: The Jed Report and TPM Election Central

Kate Zernike / New York Times:

Postfeminism and Other Fairy Tales — PERHAPS it was the “Iron my shirt!” hecklers. Or maybe it was Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the object of those hecklers, having to defend her likability. Or the resonance of her proxy, Amy Poehler, being shut out in the “Saturday Night Live” spoofs of the Democratic debates.

Discussion: No More Mister Nice Blog and ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

Alan Greenspan / Financial Times:

We will never have a perfect model of risk — The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the second world war. It will end eventually when home prices stabilise and with them the value of equity in homes supporting troubled mortgage securities.

Discussion: Economist's View, Real Clear Politics and Paul Krugman

New York Times:

Op-Ed Contributors: Reflections on the Invasion of Iraq — To mark this week's fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the Op-Ed page asked nine experts on military and foreign affairs to assess their previous and current outlook.