Monday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

It's Presidents Day. When I was a little kid, we didn't have Presidents Day. In New England, this was usually a school vacation week anyway. We honored Lincoln's birthday on Feb. 12 and Washington's birthday on Feb. 22. In 1971, the holiday was established as the third Monday in February and named Presidents Day. I'm against including some of the duds in the holiday. For example, there's no way George W. Bush should ever be honored with a holiday, even 1/44th of a holiday.

The current President has a low key schedule on the holiday. He was supposed to be at Camp David with the family. But, they came back last night because we're getting a little snow in DC later today.

Congress is in recess all week. Obama could and should make some recess appointments, including the nominees for the National Labor Relations Board: Craig Becker and Mark Pearce. Last week, the AFL-CIO did an action alert to its members, asking them to call the White House to urge recess appointment of those positions. It's a sad state of affairs when one of the biggest supporters of the Democratic Party has to resort to that type of action. Good for the AFL-CIO for doing it. Most D.C.-based organizations still won't publicly challenge this White House even when they're getting screwed. They might not get invited to meetings and parties. That's putting personal interests ahead of organizational missions. Happens all the time.

Anyway, let's get it started...