† Pope “Not Contrite Enough” About Holocaust: Visiting the Aida refugee camp in the West Bank Wednesday, Pope Benedict XVI told the Israeli government to tear down this wall, referring to the 33-foot-high concrete wall and watchtower facing the camp, reports The Washington Times:

"Towering over us is a stark reminder of the stalemate that relations between Israelis and Palestinians seem to have reached - the wall," Benedict said in a speech to some 1,500 refugees and Palestinian officials.

"In a world where more and more borders are being opened up - to trade, to travel, to movement of peoples, to cultural exchanges - it is tragic to see walls still being erected," he added.

"On both sides of the wall, great courage is needed if fear and mistrust is to be overcome," the pope said. "It takes magnanimity to seek reconciliation after years of fighting."

† Let Them Eat Steak!: Part III: With his fiscal and economic policies having created a $1.8 trillion budget deficit, syndicated columnist Jacob Sullum thinks that President Obama's New Era of Responsibility “got off to an inauspicious start:”

Last week the Obama administration, after going through the budget "line by line," unveiled $17 billion in budget cuts. That amounts to less than 0.5 percent of the president's proposed $3.6 trillion budget for the next fiscal year and less than 2 percent of the projected $1.3 trillion deficit. …

"These savings, large and small, add up," the president said. That is literally true; they just don't add up to much.

But wait. … Last month, saying he was determined to make government "as efficient as possible" and ensure that "every taxpayer dollar is being spent wisely," he instructed department and agency heads to come up with a total of $100 million in savings.

Here is how The New York Times described the reaction this mandate elicited: "Budget analysts promptly burst out laughing." The fiscally conservative Republican Study Committee, perhaps fearing that the White House was right in thinking that voters can't do basic math, performed the calculation for them, dubbing the president's initiative "Obama's 0.0025% spending cut."

These scary numbers notwithstanding, New York Times columnist Gail Collins argues Obama is being penny wise and pound foolish – at least as regards an upgrade of the presidential helicopter fleet: 

New presidential helicopters are being built even as we speak. But Obama wants nothing to do with them, even though we the taxpayers have already spent $3.2 billion on them. This is because he does not want to appear wasteful.

Lockheed Martin won a $6.8 billion contract to build 23 helicopters, which are known as the VH-71. But as so often happens in these matters, things went badly. There were overruns. Specification changes. …

Fast forward to that frugality summit last February. Obama invited questions from members of Congress, and first up was John McCain, who wanted to talk about waste in the Defense Department - like the fact that “your helicopter is now going to cost as much as Air Force One.”

McCain complains about Defense procurement no matter who is president. However, that “your helicopter” did seem a tad personal. …

When you’re setting new records for budget deficits on an hourly basis, you don’t want anybody thinking you’re the kind of guy who demands a frilly mode of transportation. …

The Defense Department wants to deep-six the whole plan and put a new contract out in 2011. … We don’t wind up actually saving money. We lose our original investment and spend vast new sums on something that’s theoretically going to be better.

Only a liberal could argue that you save money by spending it.

† Factory Workers: Hell, No, We Won’t Go!: It doesn’t quite have the criminal panache of holding your boss hostage, but employees of a venerable clothier that is in bankruptcy are trying to shame the company’s main creditor to show its gratitude for being bailed out by taxpayers to act in the workers’ interests instead of it’s own, reports The New York Times:

Hartmarx, known for its Hart Schaffner & Marx and Hickey Freeman suits, and for making President Obama’s inauguration tuxedo and topcoat, has long been America’s leading clothier for men. Now its workers want to make the company, which is in bankruptcy, a leader in a different way.

Hoping to save their jobs and start a national movement, Hartmarx workers are pressuring Wells Fargo, the company’s main creditor, to approve the sale of Hartmarx to a buyer that would keep it alive instead of liquidating it, and most likely putting its celebrated labels on suits made overseas.

Seeing a political and public relations opening, the workers and their union are arguing that Wells Fargo, having received $25 billion in the bank bailout, should keep a 122-year-old American company like Hartmarx in business and preserve some 3,600 jobs.

At a protest rally and meeting on Monday at the Hart Schaffner & Marx factory here, one lawmaker made clear that saving Hartmarx was a personal crusade. Representative Phil Hare, who worked for 13 years as a clothing cutter at the company’s plant in Rock Island, Ill., said that if Wells Fargo sold Hartmarx to a buyer that liquidated it, “I promise you I will be their worst nightmare.”

“I will say to Wells Fargo again,” he continued, “you need to do the right thing, the correct thing. You need to stand up for the American worker, like Congress stood up for the banks when times were tough.” …

Responding to the protests, Wells Fargo said on Monday that Hartmarx has been in default on the financing the bank has provided since the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. “Advancing more funds with no reasonable likelihood of being repaid is not consistent with sound banking,” the bank said.

Perhaps inspired by the workers at Republic Windows and Doors, who saved their jobs by staging a round-the-clock sit-in, union leaders hope to launch a nationwide labor movement that will “pressure companies and companies’ bankers, especially ones that have received federal bailout money, to keep plants open.”

† Your Bonus: $0. Continued Employment: Priceless.: Two months after calling AIG out for dispensing lavish bonuses to key employees, the bankrupt Tribune Co. sought permission from a bankruptcy court judge to do the same – and for the same reason, reports The Washington Times:

"Money for nothing?" blared a Chicago Tribune editorial in mid-March, responding to news that American International Group Inc. planned to give $450 million in bonuses to its top executives during a very public federal bailout.

But this week, the Tribune Co. - which owns the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, the Hartford Courant and other dailies, along with 23 TV stations - received permission from a Delaware bankruptcy judge to pay out $13.3 million in bonuses to some 700 local and corporate managers.

The payouts come as $2.7 million in severance pay to 68 employees who lost their jobs last year remains frozen.

Tribune Chief Financial Officer Chandler Bigelow III explained the rationale for the bonuses during an appearance in U.S. Bankruptcy Court on Tuesday, using an argument reminiscent of that used by AIG.

"We need to motivate and incentivize the key people who will implement change. These are really good people we're talking about. They're the best and the brightest in the company," Mr. Bigelow told Judge Kevin Carey.

The Chicago Tribune didn't see it quite that way in March, when it editorialized about the bonuses to the same company executives responsible for the insurance giant's $40.5 billion in losses last year. "Shouldn't that kind of 'performance' require those employees to return some of their salaries, if not be fired altogether?" it wrote.

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Why We Need Gitmo): Appearing at a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing about what will happen to the 241 detainees currently held at the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba once the facility is shuttered, Attorney General Eric Holder promised that the Justice Department would not “do anything, anything that would put the American people at risk - nothing," reports The Washington Post:  

The fate of the detainees has become a topic of intensifying interest as the Obama administration's self-imposed deadline for closing the prison draws nearer. Officials have until January to shutter the facility, but federal judges hearing legal petitions from the men are growing weary of waiting for their release.

An administration official said last night that President Obama is expected to announce today that he intends to keep military commissions to try some detainees at Guantanamo Bay, but with greater legal protections for defendants. The administration will also seek a second suspension of legal proceedings at Guantanamo so it can refine the system, the official said. Obama had received a 120-day suspension from military judges in January.

The fate of 17 Chinese Muslims from the Uighur community being held at Guantanamo is a particularly controversial issue because a federal judge and the Bush administration determined that they should be released, but officials have been unable to find a home for them.

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Take That, Al Gore!): A new computer model that includes measurements of the towering ice sheets in Western Antarctica and the bedrock on which it lies suggests that sea levels would rise only half as much as previous projections if all the ice melted because of global warming, reports The New York Times:

The flow of ice into the sea would probably raise sea levels about 10 feet rather than 20 feet, according to the analysis, published in the May 15 issue of the journal Science.

The scientists also predicted that seas would rise unevenly, with an additional 1.5-foot increase in levels along the east and west coasts of North America. That is because the shift in a huge mass of ice away from the South Pole would subtly change the strength of gravity locally and the rotation of the Earth, the authors said. …

There is strong consensus that warming waters around Antarctica, and Greenland in the Arctic, will result in centuries of rising seas. But glaciologists and oceanographers still say uncertainty prevails on the vital question of how fast coasts will retreat in a warming world in the next century or two.

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, What It's Like To Be Sheriff Joe): A Rasmussen telephone survey finds that 58 percent of AZ voters say Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s policies and actions have had a positive impact on the state’s image, and a few weeks back when the Department of Justice announced that “America’s Sheriff” is in its crosshairs, 68 percent had a favorable opinion of Arpaio – as do substantial majorities of voters nationwide.

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, "Après Spitzer"): Gov. David Paterson (D-NY) wants all 12 members of the state’s ethics oversight commission to resign after a report by state inspector general, Joseph Fisch concluded that the panel’s director, Herbert Teitelbaum habitually leaked confidential information about an inquiry into the Spitzer administration to one of the disgraced former governor’s top aides, reports The New York Times:

Teitelbaum, exchanged at least 165 phone calls and held regular dinners over a five-month period in 2007 with Robert Hermann, a close friend who was a member of Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s cabinet.

During these conversations, the report said, Mr. Teitelbaum told Mr. Hermann of the progress and details of the inquiry conducted by the panel, the Commission on Public Integrity, into the Spitzer administration’s handling of the travel records of the longtime Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno.

Under state law, commission investigations are supposed to be confidential. The report also rebuked the commission for failing to investigate the leaks when presented with evidence of them.