Morning Must Reads: Specificity

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White House

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

–A Connecticut man, Faisal Shahzad, was detained Monday night at JFK airport as a suspect in the Times Square attempted bombing. He’s expected in court today, but specific charges have yet to be made public.

–The Senate begins voting on financial regulation amendments today. As I mentioned yesterday, follow what comes out (and when) as closely as what goes in.

–Timothy Geithner is set to testify before the Senate Finance Committee today on Obama’s Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee (read: bank tax to recoup TARP losses) The proposed measure is a 0.15 percent tax on leveraged assets at institutions with more than $50 billion in holdings and would aim to raise $90 billion over ten years.

–Don’t forget about the real victims of a scrutinized, election-year debate on financial reform: lobbyists.

–Over at the White House blog, Dan Pfeiffer offers a preemptive defense of certain portions of the bill. The specificity and ferocity — a style Pfeiffer perfected toward the end of the health care debate — is notable. At this point, the idea is to keep images of financial reform attack ads dancing through Republican heads throughout the amendment process.

–There are primaries today in Indiana, North Carolina and Ohio today; CQ has a nice rundown. The races are pretty vanilla for the most part — it’s mostly a matter of margins of victory and dodging runoffs. The real upcoming action is on May 18:

–Joe Sestak is pulling closer to Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania, but probably too late to close the gap in two weeks.

–Utah’s delegate convention system has Bob Bennett run ragged, and his goose is still probably cooked.

–Virginia-based “Americans for Job Security” has a really nasty ad running against Halter in Arkansas, and it’s catching deserved flak from all sides.

–Gallup finds underployment fell in April.

–Vikings fans may not be fond of Tim Pawlenty’s opposition to the new stadium plans, but then again, they might not be fond of new taxes on rental cars, hotels and NFL swag.

–And Eric Ostermeier reads very deeply into his Sam’s Club rhetorical device.

What did I miss?