As of 7:45 AM Eastern Time this morning the standoff between Somali pirates holding an American ship captain hostage and the U.S. Navy continues. So far, it appears that the four pirates initially boarded the Maersk Alabama, armed with AK-47s, but the crew locked themselves in the steering compartment. At some point the crew was able to surprise and overpower one of the hijackers and tie him up (chalk one up for American aggression...it's not always a bad thing). The hijackers, meanwhile, had the captain. Unfortunately, the crew made the mistake of thinking that they could negotiate in good faith with the pirates, so they gave up their prisoner, thinking they could exchange the captain for him. The pirates reneged on the deal. The captain managed to convince them to leave the ship in one of the ship's lifeboats, with the captain. That's the situation now, a I understand it, with a Navy vessel nearby, the captain and the four hijackers in a lifeboat, and the crew of the Alabama on board their ship in radio contact with their captain on the lifeboat.

I hope this turns out well for the captain, who is from Vermont. This stuff needs to be stopped, which means arming the crews, hanging some pirates, and sinking their motherships and sacking their base camps. I doubt any of those things will happen.

President Obama will push for immigration reform that will involve legalization of illegals, according to this front-page story in The New York Times. If he pushes for this, which I doubt will be the case, it will be quite a political gift to the GOP (which is why I think he will not push it).

An argument against universal health coverage.

In New Hampshire, a bill passes that would bar discrimination against "transgendered" persons when it comes to public facilities, a so-called "bathroom bill", and a bill passes that would make it harder for other states to collect their sales taxes from New Hampshire retailers.