Halperin's Take

Boy, the labor fight in Wisconsin seemed like a really big story about a million years ago. The stakes in Libya and Japan are global. What's amazing (to anyone who slept through the hyper-partisan times of the Clinton-Bush-Obama period) is how these international crises have done nothing whatsoever apparently to temper the rhetoric of the political battles that are raging in the U.S., particularly over budget issues in Washington and around the country.