One person who (assumably) won't be celebrating the fifth anniversary of Romneycare is Mitt Romney himself. This is because the entire issue has become the biggest albatross around his neck, politically, as he tosses his hat in the 2012 presidential ring. So don't look for him to be cutting a "Romneycare fifth birthday cake" today. In fact, as far as Romney is concerned, it would be just fine if everyone conveniently forgot about the issue altogether.

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President Obama has now called a "do-over" on his 2012 budget proposal. This news broke on the Sunday morning political television chat circuit, as the dust was settling on the government shutdown standoff for the remainder of the 2011 budget. Obama's move was prompted by the budget proposal put on the table by Republican numbers guru Paul Ryan, which seeks to "reform entitlements" by turning Medicare into a voucher system. Obama's new proposal will reportedly also offer "entitlement reform," although no specifics have leaked out yet. What the president should realize at this point, though, is that Ryan has just put him in the driver's seat. Ryan's proposal is so radical that it's going to be very easy for Democrats to present themselves as a more humane alternative to the Republican agenda, and it's going to be very easy for whatever Obama comes up with to look a lot better than just handing seniors a voucher and saying: "Good luck with that medical insurance marketplace."

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Sigh. What's depressing about the whole thing, to me at least, is how the entire knock-down-drag-out fight is merely the preliminary round. This whole government shutdown walk-to-the-brink-and-stare-into-the-abyss thing is nothing more than the warmup for the next budgetary battles -- which will be much bigger. The entire initial fight is about staking out ground for the next two fights -- raising the debt ceiling, and the 2012 budget. Nobody involved -- not the Tea Party Republicans, not President Obama, not John Boehner, not Harry Reid -- really cares all that much about how this particular round ends up. They're all stuck thinking: "If I give in now, they'll want more later" -- and they're all entirely correct.

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In the midst of a budget fight not seen in Washington in over a decade -- with the possibility of a government shutdown looming -- it's interesting to see how the two men at the heart of the standoff seem to be the least fervent ideologues of either party. What this means for the negotiations themselves is anyone's guess, but it's hard not to see how uncomfortable both Speaker of the House John Boehner and President Barack Obama are at this sort of bare-knuckles game.

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The Democratic National Committee announced today they had named Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz as their next chairperson. She will replace Tim Kaine, who is leaving the post to run for the Senate in Virginia. This is an excellent choice for the D.N.C., and Wasserman Schultz should be welcomed to her new post by all Democrats who want to see their party succeed.

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President Obama's poll numbers slipped back a bit in March, bringing an end to his recent "bump." This was Obama's first bad month in a while, ending the positive trends Obama had set for the past two months in approval rating, and for the past five months in disapproval rating. In March, Obama lost all the ground he had gained in February, but still finished the month up from where he started the year. In a statistical twist, Obama's approval and disapproval numbers for March, 2011 exactly matched his numbers for March, 2010.

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To clarify that title: when you pull a prank on this particular day, you're supposed to reveal yourself as the prankster by yelling "April Fools!" (or even, as a purist might insist, "April Fools'!"). I am not doing so, hence the absence of the exclamation mark. Sadly, my task is today is not to prank anyone (I did that last year and promised I wouldn't do it again), but to catalogue the recent spate of foolishness from our national political arena. A sober list of the fools of April, rather than an excited "April Fools!" gotcha, in other words. Well, maybe not all that sober. You decide.

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The media is currently obsessing over the prospects of a government shutdown next Friday, and over the congressional budget negotiations currently taking place which could prevent it from happening. But this is a relatively small fish to fry, because the real budget battle will be officially joined next Tuesday, when Republican Paul Ryan unveils his budget plan for 2012, complete with 10-year projections. What is currently being debated pales in consequence to the fight over the 2012 budget, although it may take the media a while to realize it, because it is so much more fun to say "government shutdown" in a scary voice on television.

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The low water mark is the Senate, this year, who has seen fit to only show up one-half of the weekdays available to it. They took an astonishing twenty-eight workdays off, in under three months' time. That is taking almost six weeks off, to put it another way.

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Events on the ground in Libya, roughly one week after coalition warplanes and cruise missiles began flying, seem to have taken a turn for the better for the rebel forces. Surprisingly, though, the American media and political establishment seems largely focused on any number of ways this war could turn out badly for America, for Libya, and for the world. As city after city falls to the rebel forces, perhaps this narrative will shift somewhat. President Obama is about to give a speech to the nation, which may help focus the media on what is actually going on in Libya, rather than speculating about what could happen. Or perhaps not -- Obama's speech may become "the story" itself, and be picked apart word by word for the next few days, no matter what the rebels are doing in Libya.

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