First Dog food art is made with fondant, jellybeans, and Peeps at the Let's Move!-themed White House Easter Egg Roll...
White House Executive Pastry Chef Bill Yosses and his team annually make an Easter-themed work of food art for the White House Easter Egg Roll. This year's 135th anniversary eggstravaganza, unveiled on Monday, was a giant egg-shaped "basket," featuring a sweet rendition of First Dog Bo and--a little ironically--carrots and the Let's Move! theme spelled out in fondant: "Be Healthy, Be Active, Be You!"

First Lady Michelle Obama joined Food Network star Anne Burrell as she demonstrated a healthy pasta recipe, and the Bo egg was visible behind them the entire time. (Above, Burrell flips broccoli rabe as Mrs. Obama watches)

Bo starred in a White House video ahead of the Roll, hunting for souvenir wood Easter eggs on the South Lawn; there was a special teal wood egg featuring his "paw print" available for sale from the National Park Foundation.

Though the Roll included a mini-farmers market booth where kids could select their own hand fruit in the Play With Your Food area at the bottom of the South Lawn, all child guests went home with a gift bag that included some candy too: A four-pack of marshmallow Peeps, and a bag of M&Ms. There was also a bag of Goldfish crackers, and a pack of Welch's gummy fruit, in addition to other swag, including a wooden souvenir egg.

As I mentioned the other day, I've been thinking a lot about what "justice" means. And I was particularly struck with this statement about it from Al Giordano.

There are times when “The Law” is dressed up in liberal language in a way that masquerades the bloodlust behind witch hunts and impulses to scapegoat individuals for crimes or taboos that, in a democracy, we’re all responsible for having enabled.

The photo above was taken at the Civil Rights Memorial at the Southern Poverty Law Center. It was created by Maya Lin (the same women who created the Vietnam Memorial Wall in D.C.) and features the biblical quote used by Martin Luther King, Jr. at the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and again in his I Have a Dream speech..."Until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a might stream."

Its clear that Dr. King was a man committed to justice. But I can't think of a time when that included a call to punish those who committed heinous crimes against him or others involved in the movement. He certainly had ample opportunities to do so. There was no shortage of brutality in the beatings, lynchings, bombings and assassinations of his day that might have stirred a call to implement the "rule of law" for the perpetrators.

But take a look at the powerful words he spoke when four little black girls were killed at the bombing of the church in Birmingham, AL.


SNIP:

Its clear that Dr. King was a man committed to justice. But I can't think of a time when that included a call to punish those who committed heinous crimes against him or others involved in the movement. He certainly had ample opportunities to do so. There was no shortage of brutality in the beatings, lynchings, bombings and assassinations of his day that might have stirred a call to implement the "rule of law" for the perpetrators.

The one thing I noticed in my continental run-around this past week is just how mad liberals are at Obama. I remain as baffled by this anger as I am by Republican contempt for the guy.New York magazine has two superb essays that sum up my own feelings on both sides pretty perfectly – by Jon Chait and David Frum. Chait notes how systemic and eternal liberal disenchantment is, and how congenitally useless Democrats are in rallying round a leader, even one who has achieved so much in such a short time. Many Dems even now think Clinton was more successful in fighting the GOP in his first term than Obama has been. (Memo to the left: universal healthcare was achieved under Obama). But much of this is the usual Democratic limpness and whininess. If George Bush had taken out Osama bin Laden, wiped out al Qaeda's leadership and gathered a treasure trove of real intelligence by a daring raid, he'd be on Mount Rushmore by now. If he'd done the equivalent on the right of universal healthcare, he'd be the second coming of Reagan. But Obama and liberals? If I hear one more gripe about single payer from someone in their fifties with a ponytail, I'll scream.

But the right is more unhinged and more dangerously full of denial. Since I was never structurally or financially or socially linked to the Washington right, I was immune to the withdrawal of jobs, money and access doled out to any dissenter in the Bush years. But every now and again, I get some kind of amazed look – "You're not going to back Obama again, are you?" – from someone in the conservative cocoon, and when I respond, "So far, you bet!", there is often a long pause and a genuine sadness on their faces. "What the hell happened to him?" you can hear them asking themselves.

Some of this is as head-scratching for me as it is for David:

Some of the smartest and most sophisticated people I know—canny investors, erudite authors—sincerely and passionately believe that President Barack Obama has gone far beyond conventional American liberalism and is willfully and relentlessly driving the United States down the road to socialism. No counterevidence will dissuade them from this belief: not record-high corporate profits, not almost 500,000 job losses in the public sector, not the lowest tax rates since the Truman administration. It is not easy to fit this belief alongside the equally strongly held belief that the president is a pitiful, bumbling amateur, dazed and overwhelmed by a job too big for him—and yet that is done too.

Did you get the impression from the GOP debates that Obama had lowered taxes? That he had not nationalized but saved the banks? That he had dispatched Osama and Qaddafi? That he had 60 percent support for a sane and succcessful foreign policy? That he was an exemplar of all those social values conservatives say they support: a model husband and father, a black man who has eschewed identity politics almost entirely, a president whose speeches are among the most intellectually Christian of any in modern times? This strange, bizarre hostility to him I put down to displaced anger at Bush, to cultural panic among the old, but also to a wider propaganda support system that is truly a sight to behold:

SNIP:

It was never my party, but it was one to which I could once accord regular agreement and respect. No more. I remain unrepentant in my support for this president, a man who has accomplished more in the face of a more hostile environment in his first three years than any president since Johnson. I wish more reasonable Dems and a few moderate Republicans will soon have the courage to say so.

The Republican party has no shame. They lie, cheat and steal their way into office. They embody such good Christian values…cough, choke, spit.

I often fantasize about a movie in the style of “Oh God”, where George Burns (God) confronts people like Michelle Bachman and Louie Gohmert or a long list of Republicans who blatantly tell falsehoods, repeatedly and even after being called out on it. If there is a hell, I imagine there will be an especially hot place reserved for these people.

It’s not often that we get to see the birth of one of these lies, placenta and all. From Steve Benen…

The National Republican Senate Committee accused Markey yesterday of claiming he “invented the satellite dish, low-cost mobile phone calls, and the ability for cable companies to provide long distance service.” The NRSC added, “Perhaps Markey can use the technology he invented to call, tweet, or message his friend Al Gore, inventor of the internet.”

Conservative humor is just so droll, isn’t it?