Old News (6/3)

Oops, missed posting my reading list for yesterday, even though I had all the articles I wanted to post open on my browser. Here's some ones to note:

• Dana Milbank's hilarious observations on how members of the Senate prefer to stoke their own egos and speak for the SCOTUS nominees.
• Lots of articles on Obama in the Middle East, starting his trip in Riyadh by meeting with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. One of the prime issues: the Arabs want an indication that they're dealing with someone who views the Israeli-Arab-US triangle differently. NYT columnist Thomas L. Friedman has a column based on an interview with the president about his thoughts and challenges with the Middle East.
• Brazil found more wreckage from the Air France flight that apparently crashed off their coast, further confirming the tragedy.
• The news from Israel: Bush officials agreed to the construction of settlements in the West Bank, and they're irked that Obama hasn't recognized that; Defense Minister Ehud Barak says that all options are on the table in Israel's dealings with Iran.
• David Brooks and Gail Collins of the NYT have posted a conversation about how Sonia Sotomayor's life matters in what she brings to the Supreme Court.
• Oh, the political strategery: President Obama is slowly stripping the Republican Party of its moderates, confining it to a narrow regional (Southern) party...so says Politico. The latest GOP casualty to fall victim to serving at the pleasure of the president: Congressman John McHugh, tapped to serve as Secretary of the Army.
  
• Along the same lines: Chris Cillizza asks if the GOP should "head down the populist path"?
• And a considerable point of local pride for me: Yesterday both houses of the New Hampshire state legislature approved, and Governor John Lynch signed, the new same-sex marriage bill, with a compromise amendment specifying that churches were not obligated to perform same-sex marriages. Governor Lynch made an excellent statement extolling its protections of individual freedom-- a concept traditionally near and dear to many in the "Live Free or Die" Granite State. The law takes effect on January 1, 2010.