JP Morgan Chase is on the path to finalizing their Bear Sterns buyout, but billionaire Bear Sterns shareholder Joe Louis is considering an attempt at blocking the deal. I guess he isn't just going to grin and Bear it without some Sterns looks!

Via TPM: Remember yesterday when we talked about how John McCain seems to not know what's going on in the Middle East?

The news out of the Proud Mitten State is that the State Senate has adjourned for a 2-week Easter break without approving a plan for a re-vote.

Several years after buried industrial waste pits near the San Jacinto River were linked to severe pollution and toxic levels of dioxin in fish in and around Harris County, the EPA has designated the area for Superfund cleanup, along with a few other sites in Texas. And that's good progress in cleaning up some of the state's most polluted areas.

When I wrote for an alt-weekly, it seemed like one of the main functions of the publication (or the genre, really) was raking the local big city dailies over the coals, or pointing out when they did something silly, and even passing out the credit when they did something right. It is the media meta-critic aspect of the alt-weekly that drew me to them in the first place. Kevin Brass at the Austin Chronicle has cast an eye to the Austin American-Statesman's recent management and editorial choices and gives a snapshot of an industry that is currently in heavy flux - daily newspapers - and the decisions that shape it.

I am not the only one to make the argument that we don't really know what the partisan demographics currently are in Texas.

I wasn't sure it was possible for President Bush's approval rating to get any lower, but this is a year of political surprises, one after another: Bush drops to 31 percent.

What's going on here? Reports are coming in that the unit price of oil dropped below $100 on reduced demand? Could it be that people are responding to wickedly high gas prices by... buying less gas?

One of my daily reads in the blogosphere is Mark Kleiman. He's got a hilarious "what if" up today that has Ann Coulter liveblogging the Gettysburg Address.

If you're into reading all about Everything First Lady, 1992 - 2000, then today was a banner day for you. There are over 11,000 pages to plow through, so get comfy.