–President Obama will face the BP outrage and the press headon today in the East Room at 12:45. Tune in. This is crises time for the White House, which is taking a large share of the fury over “the plume of doom.” Mike Allen has a preview of what Obama will say. “The President will discuss the conclusions of the 30-day safety review on offshore drilling he directed Secretary Salazar to conduct. He will announce standards to strengthen oversight of the industry and enhance safety, a first step in a process that the independent Presidential Commission will continue. . . . In addition, the planned exploration off the coast of Alaska in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas will be delayed pending the Commission’s review, and the August lease sale in the Western Gulf will be canceled. The lease sale off the coast of Virginia will also be canceled due to environmental concerns and concerns raised by the Defense Department.”
–Per a preview by White House Terrorism czar John Brennan, the Obama Administration’s new National Security Strategy will focus heavily on homegrown threats. In a speech Thursday, Brennan declared a “new phase” of the terrorist threat. Spencer Ackerman has more.
–The “top kill” has begun.
–North Korea is still behaving like it wants war.
–Steve Jobs and Apple still don’t seem to know how to handle political apps for the iPhone. The company initially rejected an app by an opponent of Rep. Henry Waxman for being a personal attack, and then reversed itself. This is another sign that it is a bad idea to have one company regulating information over the devices it makes.
–TARP Flashback: The Washington Post’s Chris Cilizza points out that South Carolina Rep. Gresham Barrett, a Republican, has devoted 60 seconds to defending his 2008 vote for George W. Bush’s TARP program. Who would have guessed that Republicans would still be running scared over this vote, on the same bill that put a final nail in the coffin of John McCain’s 2008 campaign?
–In Connecticut, only 34 percent of voters think Richard Blumenthal lied about his Vietnam service, while 54 percent think he misspoke. Good news for the Democrat, who still leads Linda McMahon.
–Justice Antonin Scalia praises Elena Kagan’s lack of judicial experience as a good thing, confusing Republican Senators who don’t want to spend the entire Judiciary Committee hearing talking about gays in the military.
–Facebook is unveiling new privacy settings again, which is either good or bad news depending on your desire to see the photos of that ex-boyfriend who defriended you.
–Nikki Haley, the South Carolina Republican in an inappropriate physical contact scandal, now says her blogger accuser has an “overactive imagination.”
–TIME’s video producers figure out how to get the new Miss USA into a video.
–I’m willing to bet Simon Cowell’s chest hair that the kid with the chin moss who won American Idol won’t sell as many records as runner-up Crystal Bowersox.
