In a surprise visit to Baghdad yesterday, President Obama praised the performance of U.S. troops and told them it was time for them to step aside and let Iraqis do things for themselves.

Last Friday William Gallion and Shirley Cunningham Jr. were found guilty of stealing millions of dollars from their own clients in a Fen-Phen case in Kentucky.

According to John Vandeventer on the SEIU’s blog, it is imperative that we have a new "public" (read: government-run) health plan in order to reform the health care system. To demonstrate this, Vendeventer makes two points:

Don't TIPS? Do FOE? Kris Dunn explains messaging during a union organizing campaign, in summary:

So, contrary to what the union lobby would have you believe, laws are already on the books to cover what an employer can and can't say during the election campaign. 

As noted here the very end (page A19) of this NY Times poll/article is far more interesting than the (page A1) beginning:

Last week I attended the Disaster Recovery Journal conference in Orlando, FL.  Around me were over 500 business continuity and disaster recovery experts from companies all across the U.S.  It was an impressive group of professionals whose purpose in companies is to make sure that business operations are maintained or quickly recovered after a disaster. 

The Wall Street Journal asks a good question "Where's the enforcement follow-up?"

The powerful 6.3-magnitude earthquake that struck Italy’s Abruzzo region east of Rome yesterday has left at least 179 people dead, 1,500 injured, and thousands homeless. Rescue operations continue today and the death toll is expected to mount.

• US Interior Department Report: Wind could supply enough power to meet US electricity needs - Now if we could actually build it
• How Ford Restructured $9.9 Billion of Debt in a Month

In case you were watching basketball, here was SNL's Pres. Obama making "some tough business decisions":

Gerald Seib on populist anger:

Sandy Stimpson, from the Mobile Chamber, in the Mobile Press-Register:

In Southern California this morning, the House Foreign Affairs Committee is holding a field hearing regarding global copyright piracy.  Today’s gathering is especially timely as aficionados prepare for the summer movie season, and as Congress and the administration consider ways to combat this form of job-destroying theft. 

Today's Wall Street Journal looks at a fight between the business community and the White House over Obama's proposal to raise taxes on overseas profits.  At issue is allowing multinationals to avoid U.S.

A sad state of affairs, from the Detroit News (h/t Tax Policy Blog)

In an April 2nd op-ed in the New York Times, Philip Howard, who is the chairman of Common Good (a legal reform group), talked about creating health courts. The Chamber has for some time been intrigued by the idea of reducing the randomness of medical liability cases by removing them to special courts, the same way we do with banking and admiralty cases.

Floundering with their argument that card check is needed to ensure that workers who want a union can organize, and failing to convince that the rapid, mass-unionization of workers who do not want to organize will save the economy; unions are now painting EFCA as an extension of the Civil Rights movement. Five things:

First, a quote from César Chávez in his battle with the Teamsters, who, he felt, represented only themselves, and not workers: "Let's have elections, and let the workers decide."

In the restroom of a family-owned restaurant in Southern California, employees replaced a mirror that had been destroyed by vandals. Since the new mirror was two inches shorter than the old one, it was hanging two inches too high to satisfy disabilities regulations and standards. Once he was notified of the mistake, restaurant owner Ron Piazza immediately lowered the mirror. But it was already too late. Piazza's restaurant was sued. The plaintiffs are alleging that the height of Piazza's mirror inflicted damages each time they visited – for a total of 27 incidents in a three month period.

Megan McArdle asks "Why Did so Many UAW Workers Stay?" and while acknowledging the obvious, they had a sweet deal they couldn't get anywhere else, she pulls a quote from one of her commenters to illustrates the big problem with the "suits versus workers" mentality of many unions:

The optimism that had been cropping up on Wall Street for the last few weeks turned into a full-fledged rally yesterday. The Dow rose 216.84 points - after spending much of the day up 300 - to end at 7978.08. The Dow is up over 20% over the last four weeks, the best four-week rally since 1933. The S&P jumped 23.30, to 834.38 and the Nasdaq rose 51.03 points, to 1602.63, and is now in positive territory for the first time this year.