With Congress still out of town, President Obama is continuing his Home Alone pranks with yet another major national-security shift:

President Barack Obama’s advisers will remove religious terms such as “Islamic extremism” from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said.

The change is a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war and currently states: “The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.”

And in case you were wondering, yes, the neocons aren’t letting the previous announcement pass undemagogued:

“If there was a biological attack, which killed over a million Americans, is this president really saying we would not retaliate?” Newt Gingrich asked last night on Fox News.

Someday we’d really like to listen in when they try out rabid attack lines on each other.

Obama Bans Islam, Jihad From National Security Strategy Document [AP/Fox]

Conservatives Falsely Claim New Obama Nuke Policy Prevents Nuclear Retaliation Against Chem/Bio Attack [ThinkProgress]

“A district attorney is telling Juneau County [Wisconsin] schools to abandon their sex education courses, saying a new curriculum law could lead to criminal charges against teachers for contributing to the delinquency of minors.” [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, via TPM]

Nina Totenberg: “When Justice Stevens retires, it is entirely possible that there will be no Protestant justices on the court for the first time ever.” [NPR]

We don’t recall whether South Eugene High School offered civics in the mid-Seventies. Maybe it was folded into social studies. Maybe we’re remembering Schoolhouse Rock episodes. So when we speak of “high school civics,” we’re not really referring to a documented event in our life. Instead, we’re imagining some ideal of what such a class would offer: the fundamentals of being a citizen in a constitutional democracy.

You know, “rule by the people.” As opposed to rule by King George. Or rule by the Generals.

For the people to govern themselves, they need to know, as the Founders would say, whaddup. (Our iPad tried to correct that to “shaddup” as we typed. We fear our iPad’s growing sentience.) We can’t make informed decisions about our lives or our government without being, well, informed. A government that hides information from us moves us away from democracy and toward — what did the Greeks call it? Oh, right: Tyranny.

What brings all this to mind is an observation by Glenn Greenwald on the Iraq helicopter video:

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These leeches – the Young Eagles:

As we’re guessing you know by now, that’s the RNC-created program for young donors whose night out at a bondage-themed LA club ended up on the committee’s tab — triggering the latest round of speculation over whether Michael Steele can survive.

Is it J. Roby Penn IV, the Young Eagles’ mid-Atlantic regional director and 29-year-old heir to an oil-and-gas fortune, who tells visitors to his Facebook page, “My ancestors, actually, weren’t on the Mayflower. They sent the servants over first to get the cottage ready”?

Scum.  GOP scum.

The GOP’s Young Eagles [TPM]

[via Sully]

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell revives Confederate History Month. Virginia seceded on April 17, 1861.

WHEREAS, April is the month in which the people of Virginia joined the Confederate States of America in a four year war between the states for independence that concluded at Appomattox Courthouse; and

WHEREAS, Virginia has long recognized her Confederate history, the numerous civil war battlefields that mark every region of the state, the leaders and individuals in the Army, Navy and at home who fought for their homes and communities and Commonwealth in a time very different than ours today; and

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