Morning Must Reads

Down in Texas, Gov. Rick Perry was firing up crowds and talking about a new Obama administration report warning about “right-wing” extremists. Perry, who hit four rallies, said they weren’t extremists, “But if you are, I’m with you,” he said.

Perry later backed up the assertion by saying that Texas could always back out of the original deal to join the union in 1835 if things got worse in Washington.

“Perry told reporters following his speech that Texans might get so frustrated with the government they would want to secede from the union.

‘There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that.’”
 
Politico — Napolitano defends DHS report
 
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is under fire for a report her agency sent to police departments warning of the rise of “right-wing extremists.”

On a visit to the Southwest to talk about border security, Napolitano talked to KVIA in El Paso, Texas about her junket, but ended up talking about the report — which told police to keep an eye on foes of abortion and illegal immigration, strong advocates of state sovereignty and returning combat veterans.

“‘Sorry to say, but it’s the reality we deal with,’ she said. ‘We have several factors that could lead to an uptick in extremist violent activity. That’s all that report was designed to do. We do not exist to infringe, impinge or invade anybody’s constitutional rights of free speech, of free assembly or anything else like that. We exist to protect the country against the homeland [sic] consistent with the United States Constitution,’ Napolitano explained. ‘In there is where that product was created and what it was designed to do. Nothing more, nothing less.’”
 
N.Y. Times — N.S.A.’s Intercepts Exceed Limits Set by Congress
 
Reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen got the leak from a congressional intelligence committee source that the National Security Agency had accidentally intercepted domestic emails and phone calls instead of the international ones it is allowed to.

Libertarians might be glad that the agency is actually revealing its mistakes to the congressional panel charged with it oversight since the 2006 battle over warrantless wiretapping that dogged the Bush administration.

But given the growing suspicions on the Right of expanded domestic surveillance by the Department of Homeland Security, this report will not likely sooth many in the freedom first crowd.

But the reporters have also begun the newest Washington parlor game – who is the radical congressman?

“And in one previously undisclosed episode, the N.S.A. tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant, an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The agency believed that the congressman, whose identity could not be determined, was in contact — as part of a Congressional delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006 — with an extremist who had possible terrorist ties and was already under surveillance, the official said. The agency then sought to eavesdrop on the congressman’s conversations, the official said.”
 
Los Angeles Times — Mexico, awaiting Obama, hopes for change
 
President Obama arrives in Mexico today looking to show support for the government of Felipe Calderon, who is fighting a bloody war with drug cartels that has already cost 10,000 lives and resulted in the narco-warlords having operational control of much of the country.

Obama is likely to hear from Calderon that it is as much America’s fault as Mexico’s. Aside from the usual demands for laxer immigration policy that Mexican leaders seek at such meetings, this session will include other U.S. policy points.

“‘No more words, no more plans, no more little pats on the back like I used to get for six years,’ Calderon’s predecessor, Vicente Fox, said in a television interview aired Wednesday, apparently alluding to a folksy but ineffectual relationship with former President Bush.

‘You have to act, and it’s time to act.’

Mexico would like the United States to revive an assault weapons ban that lapsed during the Bush administration, for example.
‘It must be said that since the ban expired in 2004, our seizures of assault weapons in Mexico have gone through the roof,’ Arturo Sarukhan, Mexican ambassador to the U.S., said in an interview. ‘There’s a direct relationship between the expiration of the ban and the increase in assault weapons coming into Mexico and being seized by Mexican authorities.’”
 
CNN – Obama: Latin America on equal footing with U.S.
 
In an interview with CNN’s Spanish-language channel in advance of his Latin American trip that begins today, President Obama adopted a similar tone to the one he expressed in Europe and Turkey last week.

Saying that there was no “junior or senior” partner in U.S.-Latin relations, Obama said he would go to Mexico today and on Friday to the three-day Summit of the Americas in Trinidad to listen. 

“Asked how he plans to interact with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a fierce U.S. critic who once described then-President George Bush as the ‘devil,’ Obama

  offered no criticism. ‘Look, he’s the leader of his country and he’ll be one of many people that I will have an opportunity to meet,’ the U.S. president said.

Though he said he believes the United States has a leadership role to play in the region, Obama qualified that role this way: ‘We also recognize that other countries have important contributions and insights,’ he said.

‘We want to listen and learn as well as talk, and that approach, I think, of mutual respect and finding common interests, is one that ultimately will serve everybody.’”