Today's edition of quick hits:
* Just a reminder, the Monthly's annual pledge drive is underway. We sincerely appreciate those of you who've already shown generous support, and hope other readers will take a moment to help out.
* President Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan this morning, and while a face-to-face meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai was scrapped due to poor weather, the president spoke to 4,000 U.S. troops after he visited with wounded servicemen and women.
* Better late than never: "U.S. and South Korean negotiators agreed Friday to a free-trade deal that the Obama administration hopes will increase American exports by billions of dollars annually and give momentum to a broader free-trade agenda."
* The Simpson/Bowles fiscal commission not only failed to get the votes needed to send the proposal to Congress, the commission ultimately decided not to take a final vote at all.
* A temporary fix: "A two-week stopgap spending bill cleared Congress Thursday night, averting a threatened shutdown Friday and buying time for the White House to try to salvage some year-end agreement after the collapse of the budget process."
* President Obama issued the first pardons of his presidency today. There were nine pardons in total, four of which related to cocaine convictions.
* In case you haven't heard, the House did, in fact, censure Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) late yesterday. The final vote was 333 to 79, making Rangel only the 23rd House lawmaker to receive such a sanction, and the first in nearly three decades.
* Dear Mitt Romney, if you'd only stop pretending to understand issues like New START, then smart people like Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) wouldn't feel compelled to make you look so foolish.
* The current net neutrality process, after some winnowing down, looks reasonably good.
* Helen Thomas wants folks to know that Congress, the White House, the American entertainment industry, and Hollywood, Wall Street are all "owned by the Zionists." Oh my.
* Sorry, Daily Caller, your lesbian-conversion-in-the-military piece is still indefensible.
* The Washington Post's Kaplan problem appears to have prompted Melinda Gates to resign from its board of directors.
* And finally, Harvard scholar Theda Skocpol offers an observation that sounds awfully familiar: "It looks more and more as if the GOP plan is to sabotage efforts to spur job growth in hopes of winning the 2012 presidential election."
#board-2412
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle
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