Morning Read

FROM THE BLOGS:

Romney must address his faith

Walter Russell Mead at The American Interest says Romney’s faith is such a big part of him, voters won’t feel like they know the candidate unless they hear about that part of his life.

Obama the uniter is gone for good

Matt Negrin at ABC News says 2012 will bring a different candidate from the one of hope and change.

Obama will lose Florida in 2012
Jamelle Bouie at The Plum Line says Romney's surge into the lead in the Sunshine State is no surprise.

Mitt’s tall tales about private equity
Steve Rattner at The New York Times says Mitt Romney is off-base in claiming he was a job creator at Bain Capital.


OTHER NEWS SOURCES:

Romney vows to lower jobless rate in first term to 6 percent
Jonathan Easley at The Hill reports on Romney’s bold prediction.

Pelosi asks Boehner for immediate vote on middle-class tax cuts

Mike Lillis at The Hill reports on the House minority leader’s move.

FROM THE BLOGS:

L.A. Times resurrects attacks on Ann Romney with expose on dressage horse-related lawsuit
Noah Rothman writes for Mediaite that the Los Angeles Times's "expose" on the costs of Ann Romney's riding habit expose a specific kind of "media bias."

Liberal civility
The Corner's Katrina Trinko spoke to AFL-CIO president Donna DeWitt about her decision to put Nikki Haley's face on a piñata.

The Problem with Cory Booker’s Twitter feed
Noreen Malone criticizes the Newark, N.J., mayor's popular Twitter feed at Daily Intel.

Would Romney be another Bill Clinton or another George W. Bush?
Bruce Bartlett at Economix thinks that Mitt Romney is more interested in identifying with Clinton's economic policy than that of the last president of his own party.

OTHER NEWS SOURCES:

Sen. Reid hints that Jaczko could serve out term at nuke agency
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko's resignation might not be effective until 2013, Ben Geman reports for The Hill.

Bain debate intensifies in Senate
Politicking over Mitt Romney's business record made their way to the Senate this week, Alexander Bolton reports for The Hill.

FROM THE BLOGS:

Did Susana Martinez commit veep suicide?
Salon's Jefferson Morley says the New Mexico governor could have fatally wounded her chances at a spot on the ticket after speaking out on immigration reform.

Is controversial conservative donor a handout hypocrite?
Mother Jones's Tim Murphy says Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts — who solicited the proposal for a $10 million ad campaign tying the president to his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright — doesn't seem to mind government subsidies that help his baseball club.

Is Romney handicapped by the media?
National Review's Jonah Goldberg says the presumptive Republican nominee should get angry with the mainstream media over his treatment.

Wright story the latest 'shiny object'
Right Turn's Jennifer Rubin says the story that dominated the headlines Thursday was the latest attempt to distract from President Obama's economic record.


OTHER NEWS SOURCES:

Messina dismisses North Carolina concerns
The Obama campaign manager tells The Hill's Amie Parnes that he doesn't expect recent stumbles and the president's support for same-sex marriage to take the Tar Heel State off the table.

Boehner: Any part of ObamaCare 'unacceptable'
The House Speaker said Republicans will pursue a full repeal if the law isn't struck down by the Supreme Court, The Hill's Sam Baker reports.

FROM THE BLOGS:

Boehner picks an imaginary budget fight
Atlantic Wire's Elspeth Reeve argues Republicans are pushing an early debt-ceiling fight to rack up political points while the stakes are low.

Huckabee decries fundraising ask with his name as 'repulsive'
Buzzfeed's Zeke Miller reports that the former presidential candidate has distanced himself from a letter, sent by the group Citizens United, that says Obama surrounds himself with "morally repugnant political whores."

A gay-marriage gift to Romney?
National Review's Katrina Trinko asks whether the president's announcement could split minority supporters and rally conservatives.

Federal court rejection of NDAA a win for civil liberties
The ruling that the defense act likely violates the First and Fifth amendments is a boon for civil libertarians, Salon's Glenn Greenwald writes.


OTHER NEWS SOURCES

DeMint defends role in Nebraska primary upset
The South Carolina lawmaker isn't backing down despite criticism from a Republican colleague, The Hill's Alexander Bolton reports.

James Lipton offers Romney acting tips
The "Inside the Actor's Studio" host has some advice for the Republican nominee on how to act human, The Hill's Alicia M. Cohn reports.

FROM THE BLOGS:

The actual first gay president
Salon's Jim Loewen says Newsweek's cover ignores the overwhelming historical evidence suggesting James Buchanan was gay, and falls into the trap of "a chronological form of ethnocentrism."

Survey: Americans would favor defense cuts with more information
A study that gave participants a fuller idea of the federal budgets found Democrats and Republicans alike willing to slash defense spending, The Economist's Democracy in America blog reports.

Was the New York Times poll actually biased?
The National Review's Jim Geraghty dismisses concerns over the methodology of a poll that showed Mitt Romney with a slight lead and voters who believed the president's gay-marriage decision was politically concerned.

Is the filibuster unconstitutional?
Wonkblog's Ezra Klein charts the rapid increase in filibuster use and efforts to have the tactic ruled unconstitutional.

OTHER NEWS SOURCES:

Senate approves Export-Import Bank
The upper chamber voted down five amendments that would have limited the program's scope and power, The Hill's Daniel Strauss reports.

Senator questions Google airfield deal
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) believes the search giant could be getting a sweetheart deal from its lease of a NASA operated California airfield, The Hill's Andrew Feinberg reports.

FROM THE BLOGS:

Bain returns to the campaign
Steve Kornacki at Salon writes about how Team Obama quickly picked up on what has been an enduring line of attack against Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney’s generosity
The Daily details stories of Mitt Romney’s generosity that the media has missed.

The banks could sink Obama
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air says nothing has changed on Wall Street, and another JPMorgan-like disaster could sink Obama’s reelection hopes.

The parties have flipped
Todd Purdum at Vanity Fair details how Republicans and Democrats have completely switched places.

OTHER NEWS SOURCES:

Issa’s monstrous Holder witch-hunt
Juan Williams at The Hill says Darrell Issa has abandoned all restraint in his pursuit of Eric Holder.

Ron Paul bows out
Cameron Joseph at The Hill reports on the winding-down of the Ron Paul campaign.

FROM THE BLOGS:

Joe Biden apologizes to Obama for forcing his hand in gay-marriage issue

The vice president reportedly expedited the president's timing on his announcement, writes Meenal Vamburkar at Mediaite.

$15 million from George Clooney's dinner for President Obama?

President Obama's event with George Clooney "could be a record breaker": details at Obama Foodorama.

Mitt Romney’s history of haircut bullying

Hunter Walker at Politicker discusses "scissor-gate."

GIF Tumblr goes viral over Obama’s gay-marriage stance

Alex Fitzpatrick at Mashable wonders if Tumblrs are becoming a political force.

OTHER NEWS SOURCES:

Presidential candidates' Mother's Day traditions include lilacs, 'something handmade'

Justin Sink reports for The Hill on the presidential campaigns' various Mother's Day strategies.

House votes to replace Pentagon cuts mandated by debt deal

The House voted to override defense cuts required by last summer's failed debt deal, Erik Wasson and Pete Kasperowicz report for The Hill.

FROM THE BLOGS:

Obama comes up short on gay marriage
Gawker's John Cook says the president should have declared his belief that gay couples to have an unassailable right to marry, not simply that he personally believed they ought to be able to

Obama campaign sees advantage in announcement
While their hand may have been forced, the Obama team believes every opportunity to distract from a fight over the economy is a good one, Time's Mark Halperin writes.

How can Romney fire up evangelical base?
CBN's David Brody says the presumptive Republican nominee needs to find an issue that will rally his base in the same way liberals will be energized by the president's gay marriage announcement

Conservatives and the 'anti-gay' charge
National Review's Dennis Prager says conservatives should argue that it is unfair to conflate opposing same-sex marriage with being anti-gay

OTHER NEWS SOURCES:

The Hill's updated Senate and House ratings
The Ballot Box team sees encouraging signs for Democrats in their updated projections for November's competitive House and Senate elections

The political calculus of gay marriage
The president's decision could win younger voters and energize his base, but he risks alienating independent voters in swing states, The Hill's Amie Parnes reports.

FROM THE BLOGS:

Obama the aging rock star
Peter Wehner of Commentary says the president won’t be able to recapture the magic of his 2008 tour.

Mitt’s glass house
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo says Mitt Romney has opened himself up as an easy target for the Obama campaign by claiming credit for the auto bailout.

No margin for error
Ron Brownstein at the National Journal says the latest swing-state poll data shows how razor-thin of an election it figures to be.

Obama should stay in the closet
Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast says President Obama is right to hold back on embracing gay marriage.

OTHER NEWS SOURCES:

House GOP freshman to defend Planned Parenthood
Sam Baker at The Hill has the most unlikely story of the day.

Biden turns up the heat on Iran
Jonathan Easley at The Hill reports on the vice president’s address on Israel and Iran.

FROM THE BLOGS:

The decline of Saturday Night Live
The Corner's John Fund says that reports the show spiked a sketch mocking President Obama for gloating over the bin Laden raid is evidence it has lost "all sense of perspective."

'We're coming back' as the new 'Morning in America'?
Salon's Steve Kornacki dissects the president's attempt at positive messaging in a time "when anxiety and pessimism are rampant."

Romney arrested for disorderly conduct in 1981
Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski unearths an anecdote of the presumptive Republican nominee being booked over a dispute with a park officer; charges were later dropped.

Carney struggles on gay-marriage questions
Hot Air's Allahpundit says the White House press secretary is finding it harder and harder to "sustain this charade," and suggests the Obama campaign could be testing cultural issues to change the campaign narrative from the economy.

OTHER NEWS SOURCES:

CIA thwarts al Qaeda underwear bomb plot
The spy agency broke up an attempted attack that would have coincided with the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death, The Hill's Carlo Munoz reports.

Ballot Box Overnight: It's the economy…
In the inaugural edition of Ballot Box Overnight, The Hill's Emily Goodin says the economy continues to dominate the November forecast and previews Tuesday's day on the campaign trail.