LIGHTNING ROUND: THE BEST WAY TO DEMONSTRATE COLOR AND GENDER BLINDNESS IS TO NOMINATE WHITE MEN TO POSITIONS OF POWER.

• President Obama released the details of his $3.4 trillion budget today, making sure everyone knows he managed to cut $17 billion, or 0.005 percent, in wasteful spending. One highlight: an unambiguous end to the ridiculous notion that abstinence-only "education" -- rather than teaching biology, STDs and birth control -- is going to somehow make younger people ignore their hormones.
• All I have to say about this new video put out by Senate Republicans -- "Guantanamo Bay Terrorists: Coming To A Neighborhood Near You?" -- is wow. Just wow. Is this thing for real? Apparently it's part of building awareness for The Keep Terrorists Out of America Act, introduced today by Pete King and Pete Hoekstra in the U.S. House. In Hoekstra's opinion, the 250 terrorism suspects that could be locked up in maximum-security facilities on U.S. soil present a greater threat than Nazi Germany, some of whom made up the 425,000 Axis POWs we incarcerated right here in the U.S.A. at the end of WWII.
• Barack Obama, like most presidents since Harry Truman, isn't holding any special events to celebrate "Prayer Day," instead simply issuing a legally-mandated proclamation. Naturally, the right wing is flipping out, even going as far to say that Obama is "breaking with tradition" -- a tradition, mind you, that goes back to the yesteryear of 2001, when George W. Bush started inviting the likes of James Dobson to the White House.
• Yesterday the House voted to establish a Pecora-esque independent commission to investigate the causes of last fall's financial meltdown. Even better, the White House has now put its weight behind the commission as well.
• Regular TAPPED readers and political junkies won't learn much of anything new from Michael Grunwald's TIME cover story on the decline of the GOP as a national party, but the piece serves three important purposes: 1) it mainstreams the fact that the problems facing the GOP are quite serious, 2) it tells the story with the right causal triggers and decisive moments, and 3) provides lots of juicy on-the-record quotes from Republicans both aware and clueless of the magnitude of their "wilderness" problem. Take it away, Patrick McHenry: "Marginal tax rates are the lowest they've been in generations, and all we can talk about is tax cuts. The people's desires have changed, but we're still stuck in our old issue set."
• Remainders: Arlen Specter gets a consolation prize; Tom Ridge is not running for the Senate; professional conservative judicial activists are "prepping their dossiers" in anticipation of Obama's SCOTUS pick; Former Bush Counselor Ed Gillespie shares his misogyny with CNN; ratifying the Law of the Sea treaty gains some momentum; Walter Pincus has some sage words on "Newspaper Narcissism"; memos on the right and left reach different conclusions on health care reform; and the White House has a low-tech secret.

--Mori Dinauer