Thieves in the Temple.

Around the table: includes tales of Republicans, "governing"!

You know that highway infrastructure reauthorization bill that Mitch McConnell is supposedly working so hard to get done, so he can prove Republicans can run Congress without everything falling apart? Well, among its problems is that it shields certain kinds of public safety information from disclosure via Freedom of Information Act requests. "Risk to public safety is exactly the type of information that FOIA is intended to prevent being shielded from the public," writes Sue Udry, but you know, it's only accountability to the people, so you can see why Mr. McConnell doesn't care.

Speaking of that highway bill, Scott Klinger says we should fund the Highway Trust Fund in ways other than what the Senate has proposed in its legislation, like closing the corporate offshore profits loophole. As an aside, the Senate is actually proposing outsourcing tax collection to private tax collectors as a money-saving idea again. It didn't work last time, as anyone who thought about it for a nanosecond could have predicted. But hey, look at the Republicans, governing!

Jim Tankersley at the Washington Post reminds us that Jeb Bush owed his "success" at "rejuvenating" the Florida economy to a massive housing bubble. Which, when it burst (after Mr. Bush left office, of course), left Florida way worse off than most other states. Next time he says "I know how to do this," remember that anyone can "rejuvenate" an economy with unsustainable speculation.

Leon Neyfakh suggests we can live without air conditioning -- which at least one scientist estimates adds the equivalent of 10,000 car-driving miles per household of carbon emissions to the atmosphere. Ignore the notion that "civilization was humming along just fine" before air conditioning arrived -- I'd want to see stats concerning heat-related hospitalizations and deaths before and after A/C before buying that -- but attend the notion that it's silly to cool down offices so folks can wear uncomfortable business suits, or the notion that modern architecture has forgotten a lot of very useful information.

Elizabeth Hasselbeck uses her valuable time on Earth playing devil's advocate about cops beating up Sandra Bland (who later died in police custody) during a traffic stop. "But, what if, I mean, there are times, I'm sure, someone has, in the history of this land, used a cigarette against a police officer, maybe chucked it at him, pushed it at him." Number one, speak English! Number two, the officer had at least two far more powerful weapons than a lit cigarette. Let's do ourselves a favor and never speak of Elizabeth Hasselbeck again.

Finally, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker stopped in at both legendary Philadelphia cheesesteak stops on Tuesday. Chiding Mr. Walker for ordering American cheese and no onions is so stupid I shouldn't even have to waste space calling it stupid, but chiding him for cutting in line and leaving trash behind is entirely appropriate. And those protestors held up such asinine signs I can't dismiss the possibility that the Walker campaign planted them.

Around the table: how Scott Walker will *fit right in* in Washington, and other stories.

Stephen M. Walt argues that if ISIS actually succeeds in establishing a state, our best course of action is containment. Right-wingers who find that the idea of containment doesn't adequately arouse them should remember that their hero, Ronald Reagan, never asked Congress for a declaration of war against the Soviets, who were a more powerful enemy than whatever Iraq-sized nation ISIS establishes will be -- especially if, as any reasonable person would expect, ISIS finds statecraft to be a lot harder than blowing crap up.

Brian Murphy, writing at Talking Points Memo, provides a comprehensive report of how badly Scott Walker's baby, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, has run. You'll experience the shock of recognition when you read about the folks who donated six figures to Walker campaigns and got millions of dollars in tax credits, because that sort of thing happens in Congress all the time -- big corporations make millions in donations and get billions in tax breaks. See? Scott Walker will fit right in over in Washington, D.C.

FAIR catches Politico announcing that "Tennessee is the Capital of American Jihad," based on, literally, two incidents of domestic terrorism in the Volunteer State six years (and hundreds of miles!) apart. Two incidents -- why, it's an unstoppable juggernaut of an argument! Best part? FAIR makes up a fake Politico cover featuring two white Southern terrorists, with similarly histrionic headlines.

Kentucky gun-store owner bans Muslims from her place of business. Then whines about how, as a white person, she has no "freedom" anymore, and asserts that putting the sign up is only "freedom of speech," which certainly isn't true when you enforce the sign. You'd think gun-lovers would want to associate with other gun-lovers, but not this one. She also says her store will go out of business at the end of the month; I wonder why.

Finally, NASA's Kepler spacecraft finds another planet that could support life -- its year being only a little longer than ours, which puts it in the zone where it could support life, though there's still a lot we don't know, because the planet is 1,400 light years away. Presumably the natives, if there are any, also don't call it "Kepler-452b" like we do.

Around the table: six more tales of our divided nation.

Former NATO General/Democratic Presidential candidate Wesley Clark suggests that America should have internment camps for "radicalized" Americans. Busts out a Nazi analogy, too, which reminds us that we're not actually at war with anyone right now, at least not as the Constitution dictates. (The "war on terror" doesn't count.) This "get(ting) tough" he proposes, of course, could not possibly be used against an administration's political enemies.

Democrats are apparently offering to allow Confederate flags to be sold at national parks in exchange for consideration of the Voting Rights Amendment Act. Needless to say, as a sanctimonious purist, I'm not going to waste any of your time with any action alerts I might get supporting that stratagem. And I don't if Republicans will go for it -- Confederate flag only really matters to them insofar as it reminds the ignorant to vote for them, and I think they've accomplished that much with their flag-related shenanigans already.

Elliot Berkman says that "Studying Human Psychology Turned Me into a Political Liberal." It's full of good insights, but it's always seemed to me that arguing the primacy of "enlightened self-interest" makes no logical sense -- there are plenty of "enlightened self-interests" to choose from, and more to the point, there are even more unenlightened self-interests that folks mistake for "enlightened self-interests" to choose from.

The Hill finds that both parties are using "too big to fail" banksters as a punching bag in the 2016 races. And though Carly Fiorina gets off the best zinger against "too big to fail," we don't learn what Republicans say they would do about it, meaning we don't get to evaluate their proposals against Democrat proposals. And if Republican proposals all turn out to be "Democrat proposals are lame," then certainly the "liberal" media should make Republicans work harder than that.

Venture capitalist collects enough signatures (at least until all the Dick Hurtzes and Heywood Jablomes get tossed out) to put a question on the 2016 ballot aiming to divide California into six states. I see two blue states, two red states, and two purplish ones as a result, and perhaps six Republican Senators and six Democratic ones, instead of the two Democratic ones we have now (which would in theory give Republicans their magic 60 to cut off filibusters, pending rule changes and 2016 election results, of course). But California voters already oppose the initiative by a roughly 6-4 margin, and I don't see how you change enough minds to win, since hippie-punching really only goes so far.

Finally, a Louisiana parish bans sagging pants. Sagging pants look stupid as all hell, but civilized people don't bring out the big stick of government for that -- civilized people poke fun at people who dress stupid as all hell. Really, we don't have to make every manner of dopiness against the law. And, ah, yeah, I doubt the white kids of Terrebone Parish who wear their pants all down at their ankles and everything will get stopped or fined very often for it.

Around the table: where being President means never having to say you're sorry until long after it means a damn, and other lessons.

Video alleges that Planned Parenthood sells "aborted baby parts," but the video has obvious edits. I don't mean edits that you and I can see just by watching attentively, I mean edits that any moron can see by looking at the video's timestamp. However, I hear that the "liberal" media has been reporting on this video with virtually no scrutiny. You'd think they'd have learned from that ACORN pimp video from 2009 -- unless you think they don't really want to learn, which is a distinct possibility.

FAIR cleverly calls NPR's political news coverage "Some Things Considered, Mostly by White Men." You should be able to throw a rock and hit women and people of color who can comment on politics just as well as David Brooks -- and it shouldn't be tough to find women and people of color who can comment on politics just as well as E.J. Dionne, either. If NPR is even interested in politics, that is -- apparently their commitment to political commentary has rather withered over the years.

Some Texas counties have stopped issuing birth certificates to children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants. They're really too obsessed with stopping the next President Obama, aren't they? Personal to those who state that it's only the American-born children of undocumented immigrants who get treated this way: how is that better?

Scott Walker gets caught saying gays shouldn't be Boy Scout leaders in order to protect the children, then says he meant protecting them "from politics." He blames the media (and not his own mouth) for causing the mess, and he apparently doesn't know that men commit the vast majority of pederasty against girls. But using the word "politics" like it's a dirty word? That's some cojones from a soulless man who does nothing for any reason other than politics.

Finally, former President Bill Clinton now admits that signing that 1994 tough-on-crime bill for which he's famous had some consequences he doesn't agree with now, specifically all the absurdly long sentences for minor crimes. Well, it sure is nice to be in a comfortable enough position to "admit" that you helped ruin the lives of so many people over the last two decades.

Around the table: "Courageous" news flackery, mercy for Corinthian students, a bad ag-gag law, Scott Walker's lousy job-creation record part 228, and another moron morons it up on Twitter.

CNN is not only starting up its own PR hackery shop, it's calling it "Courageous." No, this is not an Onion article -- "Courageous" (and I suspect I'll always put that in quotation marks) will deliver "news-like content on behalf of advertisers," but they promise they'll be "clearly labeling that and differentiating that." Remember back in 1996, when Roger Ailes promised everyone Fox News wouldn't be a right-wing news outlet just because a guy like him helped create it? Then you already know how much that promise means.

Excellent news: the Department of Education, after much pressure from good citizens like you, has decided to expand debt forgiveness to Corinthian students. Corinthian, you recall, is the for-profit college chain that folded in April after DOE assessed record fines. Personal to those who screech ZOMG TEH TAXPAYERS HAZ TO PAYZ FOR TEH LOANS!!!: where were you when our government gave out these loans? Cheering them on, probably -- or calling the Obama Administration's modest efforts at reforming federal student loan programs "socialism." No, I don't think I'm exaggerating about that.

North Carolina's reactionary state legislature overrides a Pat McCrory veto of an ag-gag law Vice suggests might be "the worst in the nation." That's right, it was too tough a pill even for Mr. McCrory, arguably the most reactionary Governor in America and that's saying something, to swallow. If the legislature wants to know why folks can't just go to the police when they see something (hint: because the law they wrote cites "duty of loyalty to the employer" as if that means a damn), then I want to know why existing laws against theft don't protect corporations from "espionage."

Ho hum, Scott Walker's Wisconsin also ranks dead last among U.S. states in "business start-up activity," which is exactly the sort of thing a man trying to sell his competence would hang his hat on. Here's what happens next: a) Scott Walker blames Obama, though the nation's economy as a whole is doing better than Wisconsin's; b) Scott Walker laughs and says his critics are always out to get him (even if these critics now include the Ewing Marion Kaufmann Foundation), and c) if the "liberal" media gets up the nerve to report it (once they're done fellating him for riding a Harley in Iowa), he'll complain about how campaigns are so "negative." How to avoid negativity: don't do evil.

Finally, Minnesota native/abject moron posts, to Barack Obama's new Twitter account, an image of the famous "Hope" photo with a noose around Mr. Obama's neck. Then, naturally, he suggests it's everyone else's fault that they didn't understand he was really complaining about Mr. Obama's "communism" -- because, as we know, hanging Communists is a much more vivid image from American history than hanging black folks. Several quite justified Secret Service visits and at least one job loss later, it pleases me to note that we will never have to speak of Jeff Gullickson again.

Around the table: featuring perhaps the stupidest thing a Senator ever said on Twitter.

FAIR finds the AP describing "incidents involving white law enforcement and black suspects." Got that? If you're at the receiving end of a police officer's bullet, you must have been a suspect! Even if you're a seven-year-old girl sleeping on a couch! "Telling, too, that in its description of police killings in the news over the last several months...the only thing AP sees fit to describe as 'violent' are the protests." No, it's not "reading too much" to note these items -- as Rush Limbaugh used to say, words mean things.

The "liberal" media has continued to trumpet the YAY FRACKINGZ DOESN'T HARMS TEH DRINKING WATERZ!!!! line of argument after the EPA released its fracking report last week, but Wonk Wire presents even more reasons to be skeptical. I guess the "liberal" media will just ignore everything Mr. Fox said because he was once an "avant-garde filmmaker," though that description is not a terribly precise instrument for dismantling any points he's made.

Sen. McConnell (E-KY) suggests to a right-wing radio host that the Senate probably won't be confirming any of President Obama's judicial nominees. Which is very mature of him! Does Mr. McConnell remember how he felt about Democratic obstruction of far fewer Bush Mobb judicial appointees? I kid, of course -- he remembers and doesn't care, like all irredeemably corrupt souls.

Ho hum, the "liberal" media says Hillary Clinton isn't using her husband's "triangulation" strategy, which they say brought white voters from red states back to the Democrats, but adopting President Obama's strategy of mobilizing the voters who are already likely to vote for you in more swingy areas. I wonder if the Obama strategy would work in 2016, too, especially against a really good politician like Scott Walker, but "troubling the party" my ass -- it's really the "liberal" media that's mad she's not running as hard to the right as they'd like. And there's really no law of physics saying that you must run to the right to reclaim red state voters. There are a lot of populists in red states, after all.

Finally, Sen. John Thune says approximately the stupidest thing ever said on Twitter: "Six million people risk losing their health care subsidies, yet @POTUS continues to deny that Obamacare is bad for the American people." Ah, how did those six million folks get their subsidies in the first place? From the Affordable Care Act. It's not just stupid, it's classic hostage-taking: give up Obamacare, or I'll blow the brains out of these subsidies you only got through Obamacare in the first place! Maybe U.S. Senators should stay away from Twitter.

Around the table: featuring dumb people spewing forth dumb ideas about government, plus a potentially-revolutionary solar battery.

Right-wing Pennsylvania House Rep blames big government (among so many other villains!) for the unrest in Baltimore. Just two points, neither related to Rep. Kelly's profound disrespect for black folks: one, Mr. Kelly (born 1948) doesn't tell you that "the town and the times I was raised in," with "the greatest people the world could possibly have imagined," all happened when we taxed millionaire income at 91% or 70% and when the federal minimum wage had more buying power than it does today. Two, when he blames "big government," he's still blaming the people, since the government belongs to the people. In other words, typical teabagger anti-reasoning.

Paul Buchheit reveals "The Five-Step Process to Privatize Everything." They are: convince yourself you did everything on your own, insist that government is antithetical to freedom, get rich (that one's important!), defund government until it works so badly that privatization starts to look better, and "remain ignorant of any troublesome facts," like that privatization generally works even worse than a government deliberately made to work badly. Again we should ask the right-wing haters: how is government antithetical to freedom if government belongs to you?

Ho hum, President Obama seems to have conned another nominally Democratic House Rep into voting for "free" trade. If he'd only spent this much time getting mortgage cramdown passed, he might have done some good! And Ami Bera (CA-7) is another one who thinks we can "do this right" without amending the agreement, or debating it for more than an hour. Congratulations, Mr. Bera! You're now toast in 2016 -- for who will fight to elect a guy who likes "free" trade? No, the district's swingy nature does not mean "free" trade support is a position that will get people to vote for you! You know what might get people to vote for you? Holding positions that normal people actually hold.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announces goal of making a solar-powered home battery, called "Powerwall," that would "fundamentally change the way the world uses energy." I'm not sure this'll be much more than a replacement for a home generator, the kind of thing you use during blackouts, but that's still a good thing, and I presume future Powerwalls will do more. While the battery's cost doesn't sound prohibitive, n.b. that it doesn't include installation or a power inverter (or, I presume, solar panels).

Finally, Alan Keyes seems to think a pro-gay marriage ruling from the Supreme Court would be "just cause for war." Trying to wade through his paragraph-long sentences is difficult, almost like that's the idea, but n.b. that he doesn't explain why an "inalienable right" enjoyed by "the people" can only be enjoyed by some people -- or how extending that right to all people "degrades" or "discards" that right. Also, he shouldn't threaten "war" just because he doesn't get his way; it makes him sound like a diaper-loaded brat.

Around the table: from ye olde Iraq war follies to the solemn pronouncements of anti-gay marriage activists.

Jon Stewart excoriates former New York Times reporter Judith Miller for "help(ing)" Tha Bush Mobb commit "the most devastating mistake in foreign policy that we've made in, like, 100 years." Her response: that "everyone got it wrong," not just her. Having never believed Tha Bush Mobb's absurd case for war with Iraq, I can honestly say that I didn't "get it wrong," and I know a lot of people, liberal and conservative, who also didn't get it wrong. Of course she means all of her elite friends got it wrong. And given how much suffering (i.e., none) they've endured for getting it wrong, you have to wonder if they "got it wrong" on purpose.

President Obama sits down with more than two dozen center-right House Democrats and assures them that if they vote his way on "free" trade "fast-tracking," he'll campaign for them. Why on Earth does Mr. Obama imagine that'll help these folks in a tough campaign? And why does this article only quote one of those House Reps, and is it coincidence that this particular House Rep is very pro-"free" trade and pro-"fast track"? We only have his word, after all, that Mr. Obama "answered every single question" and "rebutted every single critique, respectfully," since in public, Mr. Obama's "rebuttals" to valid "free" trade criticisms include questioning the honesty and integrity of the critic. The "liberal" media could at least get their stories straight.

The Straight Dope asks if negative campaigning works. Long story short: the science suggests that it does, but the science is also not particularly thorough, especially before, say, 2000. We do know that negative campaigning about "inconsistent voting, broken campaign promises, contributions from special interest groups, and dubious business practices" works a lot better than negative campaigning about your opponent's personal foibles (exhibit A: Bill Clinton).

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders raises $1.5 million within 24 hours of announcing his candidacy for President. That worked out to a little over $40 per donor, which is encouraging, and also beat the marks Sens. Cruz, Paul, and Rubio set in their first 24 hours. Of course, Mr. Sanders won't have massive secretive SuperPACs behind him like those three will, but money ain't everything, and it's been a long time since liberals have had a candidate they'd run through a wall for. (I'm not sure I should count Howard Dean, since he wasn't all that liberal.)

Finally, Former Republican Lieutenant Governor nominee E.W. Jackson announces that anti-gay activists "will give our lives standing for the truth." I'd say who am I to tell you how to remove yourself from the gene pool?, but they'll take other people's lives in such a fight, a fact I suspect Mr. Jackson doesn't want you to ponder. Plus he wants extra credit for not actually acting like an ogre as he's being one, and he suggests that the only alternative to doing his will is chaos and disorder, which is what, class? A hostage situation. In other news, "ex-gay activist" Janet Boynes really needs to polish her stage presence -- if you can't remember your allies' names, you shouldn't be up at the podium. (Plus "we're not going back to slavery"? What does that even mean?)

Around the table: drone deaths, "free" trade, stock buybacks, forensic foolishness, pot as "gateway" drug, and Rick Santorum's latest pile of dung.

With the killing of two humanitarian aid workers/al-Qaeda hostages on Thursday, the drone strike death count stands at well over 4,000, including nearly 500 folks now described as "innocent" and eight American citizens. And, as you might expect when you're fighting an undeclared war from far away, the CIA can't tell if it's killed innocents and/or Americans until weeks after it's done the deed, at which point I'm sure "we tried our best" is a tremendous comfort to the mothers of the dead, as well as to those of us who still do not consider due process "quaint." Hate to get all Star Trek, but this is why war should be hard.

President Obama suggests that our complaints about the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" "free" trade deals are rather like the whole "death panels" dust-up during the Affordable Care Act debate. Well, no: right-wingers took an obscure end-of-life-planning component of the ACA and blew it up into "death panels," whereas "free" trade opponents have made very specific complaints based on very specific leaks of TPP text, and these complaints are nowhere near as outlandish as "death panels" were. And it's evil for Mr. Obama to tell us that certain members of Congress have access to the text, but "forget" to mention that these members are sworn to silence about what they see in the text. I mean, sure, it looks like typical Democrat weakness, but it's evil.

Rex Nutting describes "How the Stock Market Destroyed the Middle Class." A more accurate title would be "How Stock Buybacks Have Destroyed the Middle Class," since I do not assume (though I'm often tempted to assume) that buying stock itself is evil. Still, the story will sound familiar -- our government once presumed it evil for big corporate titans using corporate profits to buy back stock, because that left less corporate money to invest in workers and infrastructures, but in the early 1980s our government started believing that getting executives to "think like owners" by making them owners would make them more invested in their corporation's success, when actually it just makes it easier for executives to drain the wealth of corporations. Why, it's almost like that was the idea.

In the wake of news that FBI forensic hair analysts have, over the decades, given "flawed testimony" in criminal cases virtually all of the time, ProPublica reminds us that a lot of the CSI-style forensic techniques actually don't have much of a basis in scientific research. A National Academy of Sciences study from 2009 found only nuclear DNA testing backed by a significant amount of "peer-reviewed, published studies." Ask some Republican Presidential candidate about this and I guess he'll answer, "well, I'm not a scientist," like that would excuse his responsibility as a leader to make decisions based on the best science.

Speaking of science, Factcheck.org reminds us that regardless of what Gov. Christie says, we cannot say with certainty that pot is a "gateway drug" to the harder stuff. The moment I read that plenty of folks who use pot also use harder stuff I thought correlation isn't causation, and then there it was in paragraph four. One would more reasonably conclude that people who use pot are people who are already more likely to use drugs generally. Research suggesting that pot "primes" the brain for other drugs isn't conclusive, and I'd like to see the study that (in the manner of the famous "Rat Park" experiment) gives rats pot and then offers them heroin, but has them in a cage where they have other stuff to occupy their minds.

Finally, Rick Santorum now argues that the "wall of separation" between church and state, as described in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, means the government can't legalize same-sex marriage. I get profoundly tired of giving basic civics lessons to people who should know better, but I'll do it again: our government could very easily legalize same-sex marriage as performed by the state, while leaving it up to churches whether they want to perform them as well. Not that such arguments could possibly penetrate Mr. Santorum's mind -- he'll just do like all right-wingers do, and ignore it, and then spout his argument again like no one had ever refuted it. The best way to silence Rick Santorum is to shame his stupid ideas and then wait for him to die. After all, it's not like his works will outlive him.

Around the table: the latest "research" on the "relationship" between gay marriage and abortions! And other stories.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush apparently plans to outsource "some of a campaign's central functions" to a SuperPAC. One right-wing observer, aware that SuperPACs by law can't coordinate with candidates, says that what Mr. Bush is trying to accomplish will take "a high level of discipline." It'll probably also take a judge willing to accept the notion that "turn(ing)" these "functions" "over to a separate political organization" somehow isn't coordination. Kudos to the article's first commenter, who reminds us that "delegating is the thing Bushes do best; this way they can not only be dumb, but play dumb when they are caught. It's called taking no responsibility."

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie warns everyone that fully funding New Jersey's pension fund means tax hikes. No word on whether he wore a hood and put a gun to the pension fund when he said it. The Governor even has a twitter hashtag, #whereisthemoney. Some answers? He gave it away by cutting taxes on the rich for no good reason and pushing massive corporate welfare handouts -- neither of which you'll learn from the article (though some of its commenters haven't forgotten).

From the "Because It Bears Repeating" file: a USPIRG report finds that big corporate offshore tax avoidance would cost small businesses over $3,000 in taxes each, if governments were to try to recover the lost revenue from small businesses. Which they eventually will, not just because the quantum physicists tell us that pretty much anything we can imagine will one day happen, but because popular government functions (like fixing roads, keeping libraries open, paying cops, and catching Medicare fraudsters) cost real cash money, which has to come from somewhere if it's not going to come from some politician's paymaster or crony.

The estimable John Nichols wonders if David Koch's stated preference for Scott Walker as the Republican Presidential nominee actually means he'll make it happen. I take his point that the Kochs will spend buku bucks electing whomever gets the nomination because TEH DEMOCRATZ WILLZ DESTROYZ TEH AMURIKUHZ!!!!!, but I doubt the Koch brothers brought $900 million to the table so they could settle.

D.C. Attorney General investigates two Republican House Reps posing with an illegal-within-city-limits AR-15 assault rifle. The two Reps apparently posed for the photo right after getting out of their respective beds, judging by their hair. Though I've long believed that guns don't kill people, corporations kill people, I still shake my head at how idiotic right-wingers look when they're trying to prove how tough they are. And Ken Buck can hardly say a sentence without the word "patriotic" in it -- he even says he keeps his non-working gun in his office right above his "2nd Amendment flag," though he does not say where he keeps it in relation to his American flag.

Finally, right-wingers have been reduced to saying that gay marriage will cause more abortions. I thought they'd argue about the "lost children" gays "deprive" us of by not entering into heterosexual marriages just to procreate, but it's even worse -- gay marriage "devalues" marriage, thus causing fewer heterosexuals to marry, thus causing more unwed women, thus causing more abortions. Justified by thick reams of statistics, right? Of course not -- "(i)t's still too new to do a rigorous causation analysis using statistical methods," the theory's promulgator says, which it always is the minute after you've made something up.

Around the table: five examples of How Not to Be, plus a possible Alzheimer's breakthrough.

Ho hum, a ProPublica/Washington Post investigation finds New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's record on "fiscal responsibility" to be, well, not quite what he says it is. When the three big credit agencies downgrade your state nine times in six years, you know some shenanigans are going on, but read the whole thing, and learn how many times Mr. Christie, contrary to his persona, has settled for gimmicks and one-time fixes in his budgets.

New York state AG Eric Schneiderman sends warning letters to a baker's dozen of big box retailers for putting its employees in an "on-call" scheduling system, where workers don't know if they're working or not until the last minute. Corporations supposedly like such systems because it gives them more "flexibility" -- though workers don't get the same amount of flexibility in paying their bills. That eluded their calculation for some reason.

Idaho legislators kill a child support bill over absurd concerns that passing the bill would leave it open to ZOMG SHARIA LAWZ!!!!! The end result? Idaho may lose millions of dollars in federal funding to help find and process child support cases. This is how rageheads get attention for themselves now: they call everything Sharia law, and consequences for people other than themselves be damned.

Granville, MI car repair owner says he won't provide service to "openly" gay people, which leaves open the possibility, I suppose, that closeted gay folks or not-very-gay-looking gay folk can still get their car fixed at his shop. Same old same old with this guy -- you're-the-racist-for-noticing-my-racism, "(o)ur rights as conservative (sic) Americans are being squashed more and more everyday." A lot of people want to be persecuted in America without doing any of the hard work that comes with being persecuted.

Right-wing video blogger says he's "probably" going to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 because he now has health insurance via the Affordable Care Act and Republicans want to take that away. To which I respond: asshole! Either your values mean something or they don't -- and if your values don't inconvenience you, they're not worth having.

Finally, Duke University scientists find a potential cause of Alzheimer's disease, one that may be treatable with a drug, no less. Apparently, in mice, the brain's immune cells go a little haywire and start devouring a nutrient called arginine that helps prevent the formation of the "plaques" in the brain associated with Alzheimer's. Further progress will take time, but it's an encouraging start.

Around the table: special Indiana "religious freedom" fallout edition!

Jeb Bush flip-flops on the Indiana "religious freedom" law, saying -- a mere day after endorsing it -- that "we shouldn't discriminate based on sexual orientation." I immediately thought of Mitt Romney, too -- and folks forget that Mitt Romney expressed two opposite opinions on the Blunt Amendment on the same day.

Arnold Schwarzenegger opines in the Washington Post that the Indiana law "is bad for America and bad for Republicans." It's a fine op-ed, fairly stirring, in fact, but I remember that Mr. Schwarzenegger twice vetoed same-sex marriage bills while Governator, and a stand-up guy would have been more up-front about that.

Carl Gibson cleverly deduces that the "religious freedom" bill, as originally contrived, could have allowed college students to nullify their debt. He takes his Scripture a bit out of context (Ezekiel 18:10-13 says "a man shall surely die" for a litany of sins, not just usury-plus-increase), but that's still nowhere near as bad as the religious follies routinely spewed forth by right-wingers.

For example: Sen. Tom Cotton -- who's really gotten that Senate career off to a bang-up start -- says "we should have a sense of perspective" on the Indiana law, because "in Iran they hang you for the crime of being gay." Setting aside that little Freudian slip where he'd criminalize homosexuality, don't complain how things are here, because it's worse somewhere else is offensively lazy thinking, unbefitting a civilized people who always seek to improve their world.

Finally, for some actual perspective, Kaili Joy Gray at Wonkette runs down the far right's histrionics about That Indiana Pizza Joint that Said It Wouldn't Do Pizzas for Gay Weddings Like Anyone's Ever Asked. A lot of bad people said the PR backlash against said pizza joint was JUST LIKE TEH HITLERZ!!!!, but (sigh, again) shaming and shunning people for their bad behavior is not oppression, and certainly not comparable to turning Jews into soap.

Around the table: internet freedom, corruption in Wisconsin, sentencing reform in New York, Army apologies, bad tax plans, and another right-wing attention hound in Congress.

Supreme Court of India strikes down one section of that nation's Information Technology Act and narrows government interpretation of another. The Court found that Section 66A of that Act allowed for too much state interference in freedom of expression, while the government's interpretation of Section 79 gave it too much power in forcing online platforms to take down content. But the Court still allowed the government to take down entire websites without very much oversight or transparency, so we still have some ways to go on this. Still, it was a good day.

Billionaire Wisconsinite gives over $1.5 million in secret donations to the pro-Walker Wisconsin Club for Growth -- then gets $1.8 million in tax credits over just two years from the Walker administration! Nice work if you can get it! Gov. Walker's spokeshack, Laurel Patrick, employs classic misdirection in the official response -- says Mr. Walker was "not involved" in the decision made by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation he chairs, and anyway Mr. Walker's Democratic predecessor gave Mr. Menard buku tax breaks, too (though of course she does not say whether Mr. Menard made secret donations to pro-Doyle groups). She'll do a heckuva job for President Walker, just like Ari Fleischer and Dana Perino did for Tha Bush Mobb.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) aims to end the state's nearly 200-year-old practice of treating 16-year-olds as adults in criminal proceedings -- but the plan isn't without its problems. Among them: it would make sentences stricter, allow judges to consider previous violent offenses if that person is charged with another one -- and he's using the state budget process to ram these changes through, which is, at the least, not terribly honest. Admittedly, some states do much worse, like try 12-year-olds as adults for serious crimes, which action is a lot like giving up the responsibilities of being civilized people.

Army Undersecretary apologizes to over 600 soldiers exposed to sarin and sulfur mustard gas in Iraq and then given substandard medical treatment afterward. Sounds like the Pentagon used a loophole to fail to report this matter to the Senate, plus they put a gag order on the soldiers exposed to the gas. But, you know, apologies, and bygones. And TEH TERRURIZTZ MUSTZ NOTZ WINZ!!!!!

Citizens for Tax Justice alerts us to Sen. Ted Cruz's support for the flat tax and the so-called FAIR Tax. The former would replace low- and high-income tax brackets with a single tax bracket, the latter would replace the income tax with a national 30% sales tax, and both would give the rich yet another massive, unearned tax cut while slamming middle-class working families hard. Say it with me: Ted Cruz will increase your taxes. Again: Ted Cruz will increase your taxes. Now all we need to do to make Ted toast is get the "liberal" media to keep repeating it -- a difficult task, admittedly, given their utter cowardice in the face of right-wing bluster.

Finally, Texas U.S. House Rep introduces bill that would force Air Force soldiers to say "so help me God" in their oaths, then defends his bill by saying, "Americans have the freedom of religion -- but not freedom from religion." He may be too impressed with his parallel construction to realize he's utterly misrepresented what the First Amendment says, but let's not call this guy "traitor," OK? Because the Constitution sets a high bar for that. Certainly there are plenty of other things we can call him -- like "moron," or, more precisely, "attention hound."

Around the table: the stupid, the greed, the arrogance, it all burns.

House Republicans propose a budget, and boy is it a stinker: it would turn Medicare into a voucher program, again, would turn Medicaid and food stamps into block grant programs that states could spend on things other than Medicaid and food stamps, again, and would repeal the Affordable Care Act, again. And as for "balancing the budget in 10 years," you could do it this year if you brought back the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income. You're tempted to say, why do they never learn? -- until you remember that they never learn because weakling Democrats try to work with these monsters, instead of shame them, as civilized people would do.

Robert Reich, in "The iEverything and the Redistributional Imperative," apparently sees modern technology as a job-killing Leviathan. But the corporations who say they're serving 450 million customers with just 50 employees probably aren't saying how many "consultants" and "independent contractors" they use, nor do they tell you how many other corporations they depend on. Also, "advanced sensors, voice recognition, artificial intelligence, big data," et al need service technicians, even if their arrogant paymasters don't think so. I rue the upward redistribution of income as much as anyone, but I think he overstates the role of technology in that trend.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush says he'd repeal the Affordable Care Act and "really" reform health care by doing what he did with Medicaid in Florida -- but Bloomberg reminds us that he really, really bollocksed that up, to the point where the state has largely scrapped his "reforms." "Too many plans, too much administration and plenty of patient confusion, along with too little spending," says one pediatric cardiologist, and boy does most of that sound conservative. Well, nobody could have predicted that giving health insurance corporations so much power could possibly lead to those insurers hardly wanting to cover anything! And "letting the consumer decide," when the consumer can't predict the future, also turned out not so great.

On the eve of a tough re-election fight, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declares his opposition to a Palestinian state -- which is, believe it or not, a reversal for Mr. Netanyahu. He has, it seems, learned from Messrs. Ahmedinejad, Bush the Lesser, and Berlusconi that when you're in trouble, you double down on your mistakes -- voters still respect the air of decisiveness, especially when your opponents are unimpressive. Haaretz's exit polling showed Mr. Netanyahu's party with a very narrow lead over Mr. Herzog's as of 9 PM EST last night -- though, with 11 parties standing to win seats, he'll need to create a coalition.

Finally, new Republican foreign policy architect Sen. Tom Cotton, a U.S. Senator for all of two months now, informs Face the Nation viewers that "we have to stand up to Iran’s attempts to drive for regional dominance" because "(t)hey already control Teheran and, increasingly, they control Damascus and Beirut and Baghdad. And now, Sana’a as well." It is true that Iran controls Teheran, and has for a long time now, in much the same manner as the United States controls Washington, D.C. And why does Little Tommy think Iran has such "regional dominance"? Could it be because his Personal Lord and Savior George W. Bush invaded Iran's main regional rival on ridiculous pretexts? The stupid, it burns.

UPDATE. And Benjamin Netanyahu wins a more decisive victory in the Israeli elections than exit polls had suggested, with his path to forming a new government clearer than expected. It proves the point I'd made, but sigh.

Around the table: concentrating perhaps too much on stupid people for our generally optimistic taste.

The incomparable David Dayen explains how tax amnesty plans for corporations could do worse than simply let corporations off the hook -- they could actually "doom the economy." Long story short: tax amnesties generally don't create jobs (since the corporations that benefited the most from the 2004 amnesty mostly cut jobs and give the money to their executives and shareholders), and they encourage further offshoring of profits, which further reduces the "effective corporate tax rate" and deprives Americans of needed tax revenues. Amazing how President Obama's plan looks like a step forward and a step backward at the same time, but as I said last time, the corporate tax rate for offshore cheaters should be higher.

The Obama Administration announces it will make some small changes to its NSA data-vacuuming program. I suppose forcing the NSA to delete records on innocent Americans collected "incidentally" is a good thing, but you know what a better thing is? Getting a damn warrant every time you do your damn snooping. Then you don't have to have so many rules. You're welcome, President Obama.

"Jeb Bush's Middle Class Speech Was a Historic Shift -- and More of the Same," announces the Washington Post, and once you read the article you'll be irritated at how generous that headline is. At least the article notes that the sort of Republican policies that Mr. Bush described in his "historic" Detroit speech about the gap between rich and poor, the kind he said would consistently yield 4% GDP growth, never yielded 4% GDP growth during the administrations of his father and brother! Let some debate moderator ask about that and I'm sure Mr. Bush will recite a litany of excuses, just like right-wingers say liberals always do.

Noah Millman at The American Conservative notes that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker "has got a really valuable card to play" during the Republican Presidential nomination process -- one that would defend him from charges of "squishiness" resulting from his recent backing down on the University of Wisconsin charter controversy. That card, of course, is Mr. Walker's destruction of public sector unions in Wisconsin, but I actually think Mr. Millman sells Mr. Walker short -- Mr. Walker only won that battle because of his real talent, of being simultaneously firm and soft-spoken while pushing radically reactionary policies, and that's the "card" that will win him the nomination. (But Mr. Millman might be wrong that other candidates won't claim "his policies are bad ones" -- Republicans will say anything to win, after all, and criticizing his policies might damage him in the general election.)

Catherine Thompson at Talking Points Memo provides a helpful timeline delineating how the false connection between vaccines and autism got a foothold in America, to the point where two potential Republican Presidential candidates could make fools of themselves about it in one week. You'll recognize familiar villains (Wakefield, McCarthy), but you may not have remembered the part where both 2008 Presidential nominees wouldn't say that vaccines don't cause autism, which (since the Lancet didn't retract the Wakefield study until 2010) is, I guess, only mostly their fault.

Finally, a Republican legislator in Vermont proposes a new state motto in Latin -- one with historical meaning to Vermont residents and everything! -- and the knuckle-dragging crowd confuses Latin for Latin American and gets all go-back-to-Mexico about it. The article dutifully catalogues some of the worst comments on the matter; future historians may conclude that "I hate having to press 1 for English now" must have been written by someone with calcium deposits the size of walnuts in their index fingers. But the episode doesn't prove that American democracy "is conducted by morons" -- it proves that the emptiest wagon makes the loudest noise. The task of civilized people? Fill those wagons the best we can -- and be louder, together.

Around the table: the completely predictable behavior of right-wing fools, part 232.

Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy issues report finding that lower-income earners pay a bigger chunk of their earnings in state and local taxes than higher-income earners, and right-wingers react predictably. When you hear BUT WHEREZ TEH FEDERAL TAXEZ!!!!, you have at least two possible responses: 1) "by changing the subject, you're conceding the point?" and 2) "haters gonna hate."

Surprise, surprise, House Republican Transportation Committee Chair says the votes just aren't there to hike the gas tax -- which isn't a big deal to me (I say gas taxes are yet another tax that hit lower-income working families hardest), except that he's talking up another corporate tax amnesty as a way to pay for infrastructure repairs. Anything but tax banksters, apparently.

Elderly black man shopping for coffee creamer at a Florida WalMart attacked by not-as-elderly white man who saw him take a handgun out of his car and holster up, not knowing (or perhaps not caring) that he had a permit to carry concealed. I'm not opposed to citizen involvement in public life, but I sure do wish stupid people wouldn't give citizen involvement in public life a bad name.

10 Virginia McDonald's employees sue corporation for racial discrimination, alleging that they fired several employees because the stores had "too many black people" and/or "didn't fit the profile." The plaintiffs also allege other sexual and/or racial harassment. McDonald's is trying to hide behind "franchising," but if you've come to think the whole concept of franchising is a way to avoid accountability for wrongdoing, you're not alone.

Finally, right-wing talk radio blowhard says President Obama's State of the Union address had secret Muslim messages in it. It sure is a good thing no one in human history has ever used the word "pillar" to mean anything other than the Five Pillars of Islam, or Ms. Rios would be an abject fool.

Around the table: hope for Reading, PA -- and four more helpings of contempt for right-wing fools.

Abby Scher at Dissent describes the efforts of Reading, PA to re-emerge from poverty and desolation as a "solidarity city." Among their plans: embrace localism constructively, use tax breaks to grow small businesses instead of using them to lure large corporations who leave in a few years, and encourage the growth of worker co-ops, public banking, energy efficiency, and urban agriculture. Reading has a crapload of poverty, but their infrastructure is pretty good; I wish them success in their efforts.

Bill Moyers interviews MIT economist Simon Johnson about the seemingly inexplicable attacks from the right against financial services reform. If Mr. Johnson is correct, and President Obama has signaled he'll defend the Affordable Care Act to the death but allow "open season" on Dodd-Frank, it is a shame, because Dodd-Frank is the better bill -- or would be, if the relevant federal agencies would do their jobs and enforce its mandates. Mr. Johnson performs a tremendous public service by reminding us that small banks actually grow the economy by loaning to businesses, while big banks, "with their fundamentally anti-social behavior," play casino games with our economy.

Now we know what taxes Gov. Brownback of Kansas is willing to raise to get his state out of tax-cut hell: taxes on cigarettes and booze. He still wants to move to a "zero income tax" situation, because "(s)tates with no income tax consistently grow faster than" I'm sorry I couldn't type the rest of that without spewing water all over my laptop. And I'm no fan of cigarette and liquor taxes -- some call them sin taxes, but I think taxing addicts isn't particularly compassionate.

Some right-wingers have been spreading the notion that Governors should call out the National Guard to stop gay marriages. One of them asks, not particularly rhetorically, whether "76 percent of the people voting can be wiped out by a single federal court decision?" Well, yes, occasionally -- because, by freaking definition, we don't subject rights to a vote! And we have three branches of government precisely so that any one branch can correct the excesses and abuses of any of the other two! If "76 percent of the people" voted to bring back slavery, a judge could remind everyone of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution! And if 76 percent of the electorate voted to, say, pay all World Net Daily readers no more than $6/hour at their jobs, you can bet any amount of money they'd all be squealing like pigs for a judge to step in.

Finally, Markos Moulitsas (the "Kos" in Daily Kos) levels a slew of entirely appropriate and trenchant criticisms against one New York Times columnist who stands at the ready to defend 30-year-old rich kids who shoot their parents dead when they cut off their allowance. No duh the rich are people too, but my guess is Mr. Leiber thinks he's smarter than everyone else because he tries to have empathy for rich spoiled brats, rather than for the Trayvon Martins of the world, which I suppose he regards as a plebeian taste.

Around the table: an actual victory for justice and civilization! And more right-wing attempts to destroy both.

Good news: the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals halted the execution of Scott Panetti (scheduled to take place yesterday), until it can consider "late-arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter." The 5th Circuit may ultimately allow Texas to carry out the sentence, against a man who tried to call Jesus Christ, John F. Kennedy, and the Pope as witnesses in his murder trial, but every reprieve is a victory for justice and civilization.

Despite Gov. Scott Walker's public pronouncements that he has no interest in turning Wisconsin into a "right-to-work" state, some of his allies have announced plans to do just that. And then Scott Walker can say it was the people who wanted it! But citing declining union membership in public sector unions since Act 10 would be rather like citing declining automobile travel on highways after installing steel spikes on every exit ramp. And if Mary Burke had pledged to veto any budget that didn't repeal Act 10, she'd probably be Governor right now.

Judd Legum at Think Progress reminds us that Missouri could still prosecute Darren Wilson for shooting Michael Brown if "the court having criminal jurisdiction" over the case can find a lawyer willing to prosecute it. Let me guess how the right wing would react to such a development: ZOMG ACTIVIZT JUDGEZ!!!!! (Mr. Legum refers to Missouri state law; I have no idea if New York state has a similar law, now that a grand jury has declined to prosecute Eric Garner's strangler, which decision is, if anything, even more befuddling.)

Matt Wood at FreePress explains why net neutrality won't result in new fees for everyone. One simple answer would be, "well, because we've had net neutrality all these years, and where are these billyuns and billyuns of dollars in fees?" Another simple answer would be, "net neutrality opponents only come up with this kind of ooga-booga now, when they've had eight years?" But Mr. Wood negotiates the actual legal issues patiently and thoroughly.

I shouldn't be spending any time debunking utter rubbish like this, but no, the average "welfare family" does not get $61,000 in annual welfare benefits. How did David Barton come up with this number? Among other things, he counts Medicaid and CHIP spending as if it's actual income going to actual people, and he counts spending on folks above the poverty line as spending on folks below the poverty line. As the Center for Budget Priorities put it, "(p)roviding a frail senior with nursing home care does not mean that the typical low-income family with children is receiving huge amounts of benefits that give it a high standard of living."

Finally, those blessed individuals at Fox and Friends think it would be "great" if you had to pass a civics test before you can vote, apparently blissfully unaware that, well, that was a feature of Jim Crow laws. And I bet their ideal test would require you to say that when Moses handed the Constitution down from Mt. Sinai, he said that it doesn't authorize the government to help anyone, but does demand that government give massive handouts to corporations. A lot of alleged small government types seem to want to give governments new powers to keep people from voting. I wonder why that is.

Around the table: Greg Palast explains the Republican wave, and other stories.

America's Last Journalist, Greg Palast, claims the Republicans took the Senate mainly because of the voter roll purging system used in many Republican states known as "Crosscheck." Crosscheck purports to identify voters who vote illegally in two different states, but mainly it's a database of voters with similar names -- a database that has not only convicted precisely no one of voter fraud, but seems to have the names of a lot of non-white voters on it. Now, you may have noticed that "Crosscheck" hardly put a dent in the numerous progressive ballot initiatives that passed on Election Day 2014. You'd think there'd be a message for Democrats in that -- that they can, as Phil Jackson would say, play above the referees.

Bruce Bartlett writes (in this month's cover story at The American Conservative) that President Obama has governed rather like a Republican. He makes a thorough case, but he also confuses the words "Republican" and "conservative" (i.e., when he conflates conservatism with "hawkishness" or a "harsh anti-drug policy," both of which we might more accurately describe as "reactionary"). And his hope that "conservatives" will one day realize Mr. Obama wasn't so bad might be a vain one. Right-wingers have been spending decades letting their mouths write checks their asses can't cash. What can they do from there but double down?

Study links crops modified genetically to withstand the herbicide glyphosate to 22 diseases, including "infertility, immune dysregulation," and "accelerated aging." We'll see if others can reproduce the study's results, but I do wish the pro-GMO crowd -- that is, the folks who insist that opposing GMOs is like denying climate change -- would acknowledge that engineering food merely to withstand more and more dangerous pesticides is a terrible way to feed the world, even if it is a very good way to redistribute wealth upward from small farmers to big corporate ones.

Chemical leak at a Texas DuPont plant kills four employees -- and the state has cited the plant for environmental violations over two dozen times. This plant has been fined plenty of times, too, though the fines hardly rate a blip against the parent corporation's profits; perhaps a pair of lawsuits filed by two family members will show up in DuPont's budget. Personal to those who oppose large fines because of TEH SMALL BIZNIZZIZ!!!!!: how many small businesses kill people like this?

Study finds link between homosexuality and two areas of the human genome in 409 pairs of gay brothers, lending the strongest scientific support yet to the notion that folks are born gay. Anyone who thinks of the crap kids put up with when they come out would know people don't "choose" to be gay, but it's still nice to have some science behind it.

Finally, Stanford University scientists develop hand-pads that help you climb glass walls. The pads may actually outclass the geckos that inspired them -- and they likely also outclass the Department of Defense's much larger hand pads. Stanford's researchers hope to use them in outer space, where intricate maneuvering, as you might expect, is a little dicey. I wish them the best.

Around the table: now, with even *more* bile!

The Economic Policy Institute finds that a $10.10/hour minimum wage would save our government $7.6 billion annually in public assistance programs like TANF and food stamps. See? A higher minimum wage is not only fiscally conservative, it's also pro-pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, which I suspect informs the support a higher minimum wage has received from conservatives like those at, well, The American Conservative. But most right-wingers would rather keep complaining about all the help they have to give to Those People and pretend that making $2/hour back in 1967 is sooooo much worse than making $7.25/hour now, as if a little thing called inflation doesn't exist.

"Do You Ever Shop Anywhere? Congratulations: Your Data Will Be Hacked," announces The Consumerist. And admittedly the numbers aren't on your side, since Home Depot and Target have been hacked this year and that accounts for over 100 million credit card numbers, but all is not so lost: Visa and Master Card will be rolling out encrypted-chip technology (you know, like the rest of the developed world has!) over the next three years, and there are many things you can do to ameliorate financial loss due to hacking, like checking your credit card account several times weekly. Which reminds me...

Jad Mouawad at the New York Times instructs us as to why a travel ban wouldn't help us fight ebola. It goes rather beyond the fact that a travel ban on West African nations wouldn't have stopped Mr. Duncan from getting to Texas, given that he flew in from Belgium -- a travel ban would actually make it harder to track folks who might have the disease, and it would make it harder to get aid workers into West Africa. But please, by all means, let's just do whatever John Boehner says, even though he's an expert in nothing.

Another day, another "liberal" media outlet botching a fact-checking assignment about ISIS operatives supposedly already being "caught" in Texas. And boy it sure is a good thing that former Bush Mobb House Liberal Matthew Dowd didn't want to "conflate" "ebola" with ISIS, which of course can never be done by mentioning them at the same time! And if liberals were as hard-headed as Duncan Hunter the Younger was about allegations he couldn't defend, no "liberal" media punditoid would defend them by saying they "sincerely believed" what they said.

File this one under "one more thing Bruce Braley will be too polite to mention in his campaign ads": Iowa Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joni Ernst thinks we have to "educate" Americans that they can "be self-sufficient," that "(t)hey don’t have to rely on the government to be the do-all, end-all for everything they need and desire." Plus the whole process will be very "painful," though much less so for her, I reckon. But don't play her game: just remember that, in the end, government belongs to us, and so when they talk about their fear that government will "do things for people," they really fear that we the people will do things for ourselves.

Finally, Wisconsin Republican U.S. House candidate alleges that the Supreme Court stayed Wisconsin's notorious voter ID law because they want Scott Walker to lose so he can't run for President in 2016. Setting aside that Rick Santorum lost his last Senate race by 18 points (as an incumbent!) yet was the clear runner-up in 2012's Republican Presidential primaries, I did actually give this matter serious thought -- does the Court actually want someone even worse who could still get elected? I wondered -- but I couldn't think of anyone worse than Scott Walker who could actually get elected President. I also found that this Dan Sebring character ran against incumbent WI-4 Rep. Gwen Moore in 2010 and 2012, too, peaking with 30% of the vote in 2010, so folks, there's just no there there.

Around the table: an unusual amount of good news, and an unusual amount of news about Senate races.

Good news, everyone! Malala Yousafzai, the now 17-year-old woman who wouldn't quit school even after the Taliban shot her in the head, will share this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Nice to know we're going to give these things to people who actually promote peace, versus giving them to U.S. Presidents who have the good fortune not to be George W. Bush and who then launch unilateral, unconstitutional wars.

And more good news: the U.S. Supreme Court has put Wisconsin's Voter ID law on hold for the 2014 election, likely because the law has been struck and restored enough times that it would cause significant confusion on Election Day. And yet Wisconsin's Attorney General says he'll try to find ways to implement it anyway, because he just knows it's Constitutional. Just as you already suspected, right-wingers only love the rule of law when it assures their victory -- when it doesn't, they look to obliterate it.

In a statement widely interpreted as pro-net neutrality, President Obama tells a California audience that he opposes "creating two or three or four tiers of internet." You're well within your rights to ask: if that's true, then why did he appoint Tom Wheeler to be FCC Chair?

Wisconsin Attorney General candidate says that if Wisconsin still had an interracial marriage ban, he'd have to defend it, distasteful as that may be, because "it's not my job to pick and choose." Actually, for as long as his office would have more work than it could reasonably complete, it is his job to "pick and choose." And who wants to bet that Mr. Schimel would prioritize precisely those matters his biggest donors would want him to?

The South Dakota Senate race gets even more fascinating, as we learn that independent (and former three-term Republican) Larry Pressler, who had been surging in polls, has taken the homestead deduction for maintaining his "principal residence" in Washington, D.C., meaning he doesn't live in South Dakota by any stretch of the imagination. Non-residence was the death blow to Richard Lugar and may yet be the death blow to Pat Roberts, but do Mr. Pressler's opponents attack him, when each of them knows his attacks might help the other? (After watching these clips, I actually feel like we'd be missing out if Mr. Pressler lost this race. I must be getting soft in my old age.)

Finally, Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes refuses to tell the Louisville Courier-Journal whether she voted for Barack Obama for President. It's not as "painful" to watch as advertised (she doesn't seem particularly rattled by the question), and Chuck Todd's histrionics about "disqualification" are utterly moronic (apparently being a complete asshole doesn't "disqualify" Mitch McConnell in Mr. Todd's eyes!), but she should have just said she voted for Mr. Obama, which is what everyone thinks anyway, and which isn't as ridiculous a proposition as the "liberal" media would have you believe, since Mr. Obama received nearly 38% of Kentucky's votes even in 2012. Instead, she's fumbled away the momentum Mr. McConnell just handed to her after he was very, very testy with a sports radio show last week. Heckuva job, Ms. Grimes!

Around the table: lessons about criticism, citizenship, and good politics.

Greg Sargent describes how Democratic Sen. Mark Begich is playing up his support for expanding Social Security benefits on the eve of his re-election battle. What a shame Mr. Sargent writes for an audience that doesn't seem to understand how expanding Social Security could get conservative votes.

Josh Hoxie explains how the Republicans' latest attempt at Estate Tax "reform" actually represents just another income tax cut for the rich. Long story short: the old, well-functioning Estate Tax didn't hit the super-rich that hard on capital gains taxes, but the "Death Tax Repeal Act" would allow them to avoid both the Estate Tax and those capital gains taxes. It's just obscure enough to pass -- unless enough of us speak up about it.

Juan Cole reminds us that our government cut food stamps by $8.7 billion this year, while spending upwards of $18 billion on the undeclared, unconstitutional war on ISIS. While I'm not the biggest fan of comparing one budgetary item to another as if they're the only two items in any budget, I share his outrage that right-wingers pretend food stamps make all governments everywhere broke, while stupid war spending (and stupid intelligence spending, I might add -- we've spent an awful lot of money not to see ISIS coming) never breaks any bank, even as war spending's alleged positive effect on economies isn't very apparent anymore.

Democratic lawmakers demand that the Wisconsin Department of Transportation extend operating hours in rural areas so more voters can get the voter ID they now need to vote. Many rural DOTs are open only two days a week, which was probably fine until Voter ID laws came along. Note Gov. Walker's proclamation that "we've actually seen fewer people seeking free IDs recently than we've seen in the past couple years," and admittedly if you have those DOTs open only two days a week and a judge has only lately upheld Wisconsin's Voter ID law, you might "see" that. The main reason Scott Walker keeps winning, though, is that no journalist challenges him when he says things like this.

ProPublica looks at a federal government website revealing pharmaceutical and medical device corporation payments to doctors -- and finds it "virtually unusable." Key issues: no search box on the front page, utterly confusing links, and too much technical jargon, plus the site occasionally just doesn't work. And the corporation that designed it is the very same corporation that led the disastrous rollout of healthcare.gov last year! Honestly, I didn't see that coming. You'd think I'd know better by now.

Finally, a Colorado state Board of Education hack defends efforts to replace critical thinking with unthinking patriotism in the AP History exams by saying the United States "ended slavery" "voluntarily." I guess she wants you to focus on the phrase "voluntarily, at great sacrifice," but the qualifier is nonsense, since about half the country did not "volunteer" to end slavery but literally fought to the death to keep it. And since when is it true that you only love something if you never say anything bad about it? Being unable to take criticism is a bad quality in a friend, and it's a bad quality in a citizen, too.

Around the table: another corporate "right" free of responsibilities! And other stories.

The Missouri state legislature mulls a constitutional amendment ensuring the "right to farm" -- not so much the right to grow your own food in your own yard as the right to pen up your animals in inhumane conditions and use antibiotics liberally and use genetically-modified organisms. In other words, it's another "right" that's not really for farmers, but for big corporations. Don't they know their Russell Kirk? With rights come responsibilities -- including the responsibility not to poison your customers and their planet so that you can make a few more bucks today.

Speaking of GMOs, Neil deGrasse Tyson has weighed in on their side, telling anti-GMO folks like myself to "chill out." His reasoning? That we've been "genetically modifying" organisms for thousands of years, and doing it in the lab is no different. But doing it in the lab is a lot different, because you can do it a lot more quickly, before you've had a chance to think out all the consequences -- something nature helped us do before we took it into the lab. Also, corporations do too much genetic modifying not to increase yields or make more nutritious food, but to withstand corporate pesticides, which is very short-sighted.

Josh Barro looks at "pension smoothing." What is "pension smoothing"? Pension smoothing is when Congress allows corporations to delay payments into their pension plans, which induces corporations to report more profits and pay more taxes -- well, at least in theory, given the ease with which corporations can evade taxes -- and since Congress only looks at the next decade when measuring the cost of legislation, they never count the true cost of the lost revenue from corporations having to make up lost ground with larger pension payments years down the line. Meaning it doesn't raise income tax rates, hurts workers, and raises revenue at-least-on-paper -- it's a perfect Congressional trifecta!

Don't look now, but Americans for Prosperity has set up a branch in South Dakota, where there just so happens to be a four-way race for U.S. Senator in 2014. Will they protect the favorite, Republican ex-Governor Mike Rounds? Or will they support his challenger from the right, one Gordon Howie? Just kidding; if I were a betting man, I'd lay money on the former proposition, which won't be tough, because Mr. Rounds is no "moderate" (though Mr. Howie, at least, seems to have a sense of humor). I'm surprised that both Democrat Rick Weiland and independent Larry Pressler both want them to stay out -- seems that running against AFP might be a boon to either one of them.

Finally, American Family Association personality says she thinks Congress should impeach President Obama, in part, over the release of a Guantánamo detainee implicated in the Benghazi attack, except that Mr. Bush actually released said detainee. But remember, kids: Barack Obama has whipped up all of this impeachment talk by himself! Will right-wingers tell us next that Sandy Rios is actually an undercover Democratic operative? If so, we won't discuss it here, because we'll never speak of her again.

Around the table: it's *your* fault you're losing your jobs, factory workers! And other follies.

Good news, everyone! Uganda's Constitutional Court overturns the Parliament's recent anti-gay legislation, making it "dead as a doornail," in the words of one of the bill's challengers. Of course, the Court overturned the law because Parliament didn't have a quorum of legislators when the bill passed, and not because it felt gay folks' rights were being trampled, but the more gay-friendly members of Parliament could derail future attempts to pass it by being "unavailable" to vote, and in Uganda, that may be the most courageous thing they can do. And if you're one of those who pressured Uganda, you did good.

Connecticut Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley suggests to paper mill workers that it's actually their fault their factory is closing. But of course he can't defend this thesis -- met with the factory worker who says he and his coworkers "work their butts off," Mr. Foley can but meekly agree. It gets better: investment firm OpenGate Financial owns the factory, which is actually doing quite well, but is closing the factory so it can sell off the factory's equipment, which will make OpenGate some money, but which actually kills jobs. For everybody but folks like Tom Foley, this demonstrates how our economy actually opposes work.

Daily Kos diarist asserts that "Obama Has Rope-a-Doped-These-GOP-Clowns-Hard." Which may be true, but I still wish more would come of it than a few decent ideas moderate Republicans would have proposed back in the day. The author does stock some choice slabs of prose in his rant, like when he wonders if "the GOP is so amazingly incompetent that they have become a Sideshow Bob trapped in a field full of rakes that they have set there themselves."

Utah-based language learning center fires worker for blogging about "homophones," saying he'd given the impression his employer espoused a "gay agenda." As usually happens in These Interesting Times, reality outruns satire, and it's not nearly as funny. Well, OK, hearing the boss try to defend his move by saying that a lot of his corporation's customers aren't ready for "complicated concepts" like homophones was kinda funny, if not Kids-in-the-Hall funny. But what will he do when it's time to teach homonyms?

Finally, a Royal College of Art graduate has created a synthetic "leaf" that can turn water, light, and carbon dioxide into oxygen. The article seems more excited that it could help us explore and colonize space than that it could help us clean the air right here on Earth. For better and for worse, I bet most of us are more concerned about that.

Around the table: "one missile, one terrorist," and other follies.

Israeli missile kills eight Palestinians at a Gaza cafe as they were preparing to watch the World Cup. An Israeli colonel later said the missile aimed at a single terrorist, which is like trying to kill an ant with a sledgehammer. I'm not sure which is worse -- that they might be telling the truth, or that they don't care if everyone knows it's a lie.

Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO) introduces a bill called the Stop the EPA Act, which would require both Houses of Congress to approve each and every rule the EPA makes. Again: Congress has already empowered the EPA to make rules, so this bill is like demanding 10th, 11th, and 12th innings because you're three runs down at the end of the 9th. Can't some Democrat beat Mr. Graves in 2014 by calling him "pro-pollution" in ads? It's not like Missouri's 6th is that red.

Ho hum, Duke University study finds that Congressional candidates tend to be moderates. The study essentially finds that Republicans as far right as Paul Ryan run for Congress nearly ten times as often as moderate Republicans, while Democrats as far left as Nancy Pelosi run five times as often as moderate Democrats. But Nancy Pelosi is a corporate Democrat, and thus hardly a foil for Mr. Ryan -- in fact, if the study used, say, Alan Grayson as the Ryan foil, we might not find such a disparity for Democrats. We might even suspect that Republicans run so far right to pull Democrats further right, thus locating the "center" where the right used to be.

Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC), addressing a panel on women's issues, says that "men do tend to talk about things at a higher level" and should "bring it down to a woman's level." I'm willing to grant that Ms. Ellmers actually meant something different, but she didn't say something different -- and claiming it's "both offensive and sexist to take my words and redefine them to imply that women need to be addressed at a lower level" exhausts my patience. I do not live in a world where "bring it down" means "bring it down to a higher level."

Finally, Joe Conason writes an op-ed entitled "Borderline Behavior: GOP Demands Action, Blocks Solutions, and Always Complains." That's not merely a succinct summary of the Republican m.o., it's a terrific pun on "borderline"! But hang around for Sen. Ron Johnson (E-WI) telling the world that he's sure it doesn't cost $3.7 billion to deal with undocumented children at the border because he's been on Orbitz and you can fly a kid back to central America for $200! Ron Johnson: he gives the "Citizen Legislator" a bad name.

Around the table: the Kansas "experiment" and other tales.

Get your surprised face ready: a Washington Post investigation finds that nine of 10 folks caught up in the NSA's giant data dragnet are not in any way targets of any NSA investigation. Nearly half of the folks caught up were American citizens or residents, and the Post talks to a few good folks who understand why they were caught up, but don't understand why the NSA had to hold on to their private communications. The reason, of course, is that different elites get in the driver's seat every few years, and they all have different enemies they'd like to turn into "terrorists," and one day that "enemy" could be you or I.

I did not know, until Citizens for Tax Justice told me, that Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback called his cut-taxes-on-the-rich-but-raise-them-on-the-poor-and-then-pray-for-more-revenues plan -- the one currently blowing up in his and his state's face -- an "experiment." One thing I know about people: they just love being an unwilling or unwitting part of some politician's "experiment." The ways of God may be mysterious, but sometimes I find it especially difficult to see what holy plan would be served by Sam Brownback's re-election -- until I imagine the sight of Paul Davis refusing to commit to repealing the Brownback experiment when a debate moderator asks him, thus sealing the election for Mr. Brownback and teaching Democrats yet another lesson in the political benefits of courage.

Alex Park at Mother Jones points out a major problem with the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision from the perspective of settled corporate law. Long story short: the owner of a corporation and a corporation are actually separate "persons" from the law's perspective, which is a major reason corporate owners don't very often go to jail for corporate malfeasance -- but by suggesting that a closely-held corporation's owners can infuse a corporation with "religious beliefs," the Court has severely undermined that distinction, such that corporate owners could one find themselves in jail for what they make their corporations do. Then again, the Court could simply await the chance to rule out that notion -- they don't even need to argue the point in a particularly cogent manner, which is fortunate for them.

The New York Court of Appeals rules that two small New York towns can ban oil and gas drillers from operating within their borders using local zoning laws. And conservatives all over America are proclaiming this as a boon for local autonomy, a victory for the notion that the smallest group knows best how to make decisions affecting that group? I kid, of course -- well, actual conservatives may be praising the development, but who can hear them over the din of corporate reactionaries calling themselves "conservative" on TV, radio, and internet?

Finally, my first reaction to a tale of right-wing diaper-loaded brats actually modifying their trucks to spew out more pollution was "gosh, what a bunch of assholes!" One of my readers' reaction was a bit more instructive: "because apparently only liberals breathe air." But is "coal rolling" really as big a thing as the sudden spurt of media coverage suggests? A 700% increase in "rolling coal" Google searches over three years sounds more meaningful than it is -- after all, over that same time, this blog's Facebook following has increased over 7000 percent, and that means our work is world-famous, right?

Around the table: with special guest star Zombie Jacques Plante.

PR Watch reports on how well Wisconsin Gov. Walker's brainchild, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, has done on Mr. Walker's stated goal of creating 250,000 jobs in the state. Long story short: not good -- the WEDC has created a little over 5,000 jobs in FY 2012 and 2013, but in its reports to the state legislature it trots out five-digit numbers that count expected jobs in addition to actual jobs created or retained. In other news, I expect a million dollars to appear in my bank account sometime this week. Should I budget based on that? I suppose Mr. Walker would say I should.

Dean Baker notices that the "liberal" media seems very, very concerned with coal miners losing their jobs due to the EPA's proposed carbon emissions limits, and wonders why, when the "liberal" media doesn't care about jobs lost to trade deficits. Of course we all know the answer -- because the "liberal" media's corporate paymasters stand to lose money from the EPA limits and gain money from "free" trade -- but still, it's nice to have the hypocrisy noted.

Oregon U.S. Senate candidate Monica Wehby (R) actually tries to tell folks that the harassment charges her ex-husband and ex-boyfriend filed against her suggest that she'll fight hard for Oregon voters. Of course there's a difference between being a fighter for people and a fighter of people, but why would we expect modern-day Republicans to recognize that?

ProPublica explains how the "hyperspecialization" in youth sports ruins both the sports and the kids playing them. Basically, when you demand that kids be just like adults and be the best they can be at one sport for eight or nine months a year, instead of letting them be kids and try different things (which also helps them master different things more quickly), you get a lot of injuries, not to mention burned-out kids. And I wish Zombie Jacques Plante was around to tell young goalies that the butterfly style only gets you an early hip replacement.

Finally, Oklahoma state House candidate says "we would totally be in the right" to stone homosexuals to death, saying it "was done in the old testament under a law that came directly from God." And he said all this on Facebook, where nothing can ever be unsaid. Anyway, Leviticus 20 prescribes the death penalty for all sorts of things in addition to homosexuality -- cursing your parents, adultery, sleeping with your stepmother or daughter-in-law, sleeping with both your wife and her mother, bestiality -- so you have to wonder, as usual, why homosexuality seems to bother him the most.

Around the table: solar panel users are FREE RIDERZ!!!!! and other absurdities.

Right Wing Watch notes that Tea Party clowns have begun to promote a massive demonstration ominously called Operation American Spring, scheduled for May 16 at the Mall in D.C. But Operation American Spring's organizers have openly called for a military coup against our center-right President, which no liberal did in the aftermath of Mr. Bush's 2004 re-election, or of any of the subsequent humiliations Mr. Bush visited upon our great land. I say if these clowns want the Democrats to win back the House and expand their Senate majority, then they ought to go ahead and throw their little pity party. (Yes, even if they're all armed, it's still a pity party.)

The Los Angeles Times notices the right-wing war on solar power users. "If you are using the grid and benefiting from the grid, you should pay for it," says one right-wing spokeshack. You mean like solar power users already do when they have to draw energy from the grid? And don't other users benefit from the power solar users put into the grid, which utilities can presumably resell? Why does any "liberal" media outlet even quote such offensively stupid crap? And how, ultimately, is it somehow evil for people, and not corporations, to create electricity?

Robert Reich describes a California bill, SB 1372, which would hike state taxes on corporations that have a high CEO-to-worker-pay ratio (and cut taxes for corporations with a low CEO-to-worker-pay ratio, bet the "liberal" media doesn't report that part). I think the bill's a bit roundabout for my taste -- why not just hike taxes on millionaire income? But the Chamber of Commerce naturally calls it a "job-killer" (are those the only two words of English their spokeshacks know?), though we might more accurately describe the Chamber of Commerce a "job-killer" when it sinks tens of millions of dollars into political ads instead of, you know, hiring people to make stuff, like our grandparents did.

Right-wing "Christian" Ralph Reed can't say for sure whether a kid is better off in an orphanage or being adopted by a same-sex couple. "I think the social science is just simply not in yet on same-sex couples," he said. He had just said the "social science" was in to say one-man-one-woman families were better, but never mind -- "the social science is just simply not in yet" is pretty weak tea, and only reminds us that he's the guy who invented compassionate bigotry. He even makes Cokie Roberts look good. Indeed, you have to wonder if that was the idea.

Finally, both of South Carolina's U.S. Senators and the local U.S. House Rep. skipped the unveiling of a statue of an anti-segregationist U.S. District Judge in Charleston. They all claimed scheduling conflicts -- the U.S. House Rep in question, Mark Sanford, said he was in Virginia, leading one to ask if Virginia is the new "Appalachian trail." I suppose they could also all claim they have re-election battles to fight this year, but then you'd have to ask why they would all think honoring an anti-segregation judge would cost them votes.

Around the table: the struggle to detect signs of intelligent life in corporations and government.

Ho hum, Citizens for Tax Justice finds that the latest Ryan Budget gives millionaires an average tax cut of over $200,000. Which they'll then turn around and use to create jobs, right? Sure -- just like they do whenever they get a massive tax cut. Which means "never," since the rich are very much like you and me in that they hoard a windfall when they get it.

Richard Kirsch describes some of the challenges unions face in organizing retail and fast-food workers today. Key finding: large corporations are extremely powerful, even "more powerful than governments," but they distribute their workers over hundreds of sites and unions can really only organize one at a time, giving said unions very little power to change what a corporation does. That's if it succeeds, of course -- workers in retail and fast food turn over a lot, which makes getting half the workers to sign cards that much harder.

Tennessee pols see the gnarled, ringed hands of the Koch brothers behind a bill restricting municipalities from creating mass transit programs using dedicated lanes -- you know, like the one Nashville just so happens to be trying to build right now to shorten commuting times. The good news? Sunshine on this bill might kill it, as it killed Tea Party efforts to kill solar power efforts in Georgia (though at least one other Tea Party group fought on the side of the angels during that battle).

Speaking of the Koch brothers, their front group Americans for Prosperity is dropping over a half-mil on an ad nominally aimed at incumbent Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor (D), featuring a speaker who seems to have no idea if he has health insurance or not. See, what you do here is you all get together and laugh at this clown, who seems to think his ignorance is someone else's fault, and whose wife, perhaps not coincidentally, narrated another AFP anti-Affordable Care Act spot broadcast in Arkansas that reporters found to be, well, not necessarily in line with the facts.

Hobby Lobby -- the corporation trying to assert before the Supreme Court that it has the "religious freedom" to deny its workers contraception coverage -- has pumped over $70 million of its employee retirement plan into mutual funds investing in corporations making abortion drugs and contraception pills and devices. Hobby Lobby's Glorious Leaders no doubt stand ready to tell us that they have no control over what the mutual fund does with its money, which I knew was bunkum even before I heard of the Ave Maria Fund. I guess actual people have an easier time living their values than fictional ones.

Finally, scientists have found an ocean under the icy surface of one of Saturn's moons, making that moon a candidate to support life. That life may not be very lively, since Enceladus is, like many of Saturn's moons, quite small and quite cold, and the ocean underneath its icy surface is about the size of Lake Superior. Still, it's a start.

Action: a bogus "religious" "freedom" bill in Arizona, and keeping Amazon from handing over your customer info to the CIA.

First things first. Arizona's state legislature just passed SB 1062, which would let businessfolk and government workers discriminate against gay folks if they presume to hold a "sincere religious belief" that Leviticus is anything but a book about taking precautions with blood. You'd think Arizona's legislators wouldn't want so much attention after SB 1070, the nefarious "show me your papers" bill, but, apparently, they never learn. The bill now goes to Governor Brewer for approval, and both the ACLU and the People for the American Way help you urge Gov. Brewer to veto the bill. Is it any good, anymore, telling people that their religious "freedoms" don't get to trample on other people's actual freedoms -- that we all have "sincere beliefs" we don't automatically impose upon everyone else because, well, we're not more important than everyone else? Here's something that might make Gov. Brewer listen: businesses that exercise the "freedom" to have gay-free lunch counters will bring bad PR on themselves from all over America, and thus cost the state money. I hate to make it about money, but I also like to get the job done.

Meanwhile, Amazon recently got $600 million to provide "cloud computing" services to the CIA. And Amazon currently provides cloud computing services to you, if you're a customer. See where there might be a problem? Our government loves collecting information about us, and they might well use the "in" they've now got with Amazon to pressure them (or perhaps "pressure" them) to hand over information about what you're buying and watching. I've heard from good folks that "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear," but let's say you've watched the AMC show Breaking Bad on Amazon Prime. You're not doing anything wrong, right? But can you foresee the CIA asking for lists of people who've watched that show, because they think some of them might want to learn how to become a meth kingpin or build a wheelchair bomb? Can you foresee the CIA one day becoming so desperate for results that they harass or torture folks on that list until they confess to anything? If you can foresee any of that, then Roots Action helps you tell Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to promise his corporation won't provide customer info to the CIA.

Around the table: folly, folly, folly, and, also, folly.

Tennessee state legislature also pushes an anti-gay discrimination bill in the name of "religious freedom," one that would allow businesses like wedding vendors to "turn away" gay folks. Money quote from state legislator: "“I think it’s more wrong to force people to violate their conscience" than to protect gays from discrimination. But businesses provide a service, and once you're providing a service to other people who have rights just like you, your "conscience" doesn't reign supreme. Next up: state legislatures seek to nullify the 13th and 14th Amendments because the Bible tolerates slavery, and, you know, some people might have sincere religious beliefs about that.

"Horror at the world's largest solar farm days after it opens as it is revealed panels are SCORCHING birds that fly over them," screeches the headline on this London Daily Mail article. But we're looking at a giant plant of 300,000 mirrors reflecting sunlight to a giant water tower, not the photovoltaic panels you're likely more familiar with. I bet a lot of folks are going to look at the headline and think ZOMG SOLAR POWER KILLZ!!!!! And plenty of environmentalists who'd never get a second look from the "liberal" media will suddenly get exposure when they oppose solar power (and wind power, for that matter).

Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, the man who gives Everyman a bad name, has taken a union job at a Chrysler plant. And he promptly took to Facebook about being "required" to join the union (which isn't true, actually -- he's just required to pay dues) and then seemed to defend private unions, saying they represent "a choice between employees and employers." So how does he really feel? Oh, who knows or cares? In any case, he's gotten the memo from his real paymasters that private unions are OK until all the public unions are gone, after which the private unions will most decidedly not be OK.

George Zimmerman, arguably the most hated man in America and for good reason, claims that "(t)he government, the president, the attorney general" or somebody has made him a "scapegoat," not that he can say what he'd be a scapegoat for because "I don’t know what they’re thinking or why they’re thinking it, all I know is that they’re doing it." Usually you can tell "what they're thinking or why they're thinking it" by what they're doing. Seriously, what a diaper-loaded brat -- I hope people point to him on the TV (where he always is anymore!) and tell their children that this is how not to be.

Penny rants: breaking the back of hypocrisy since 2005.

Uh oh: Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell's primary challenger, Matt Bevin, has been crushing Mr. McConnell for his support of the 2008 financial services bailout -- but it turns out Mr. Bevin's firm itself praised said bailout in a letter to its investors. Only "don't call it a bailout," the letter said, though it did not follow with "it's been here for years." It gets better: Mr. Bevin's firm also praised the stimulus! Mr. Bevin's spokeshack first said his opinions about matters bailout- and stimulus-related hadn't changed, despite the written evidence that they had, and then said that Mr. Bevin's signing off on these statements was a "formality" that didn't imply that he approved of them. She can call that a "formality" if she likes, but the SEC calls that Mr. Bevin's obligation under the law, which tells me that Mr. Bevin's just another one who thinks laws are only for other people. This is bad, bad news for Mr. Bevin, unless he can convince large numbers of voters in Kentucky that his approval of the bailout matters less than the establishment press "opposing" him. Even that's unlikely -- folks really, really don't like the establishment press, but they really, really hate the bailout.

A Republican-dominated Kansas House passes a massive anti-gay discrimination bill, one which allows private citizens and state officials to refuse to serve gays if they hold a "sincere religious belief" that homosexuality is an abomination. Then a quite-justified storm of criticism followed -- some of it coming from the state business community -- and the state Senate subsequently announced that, well, the bill has problems and needs a bit of rewriting. (First, I suppose, they'll have to figure out who wrote the bill, since the House Speaker doesn't seem to know for sure.) Folks are mainly mad because the bill would discriminate against gays in more or less the way Jim Crow laws discriminated against black folks, and while I share that anger, my anger also goes much deeper: I'm so, so sick and tired of bigots claiming they're being "discriminated against" because the law won't let their bigotry run roughshod over other people's real rights, and I'm so, so, so sick and tired of the weakest people in America getting attention with their whining and their tantrums whenever the world around them actually becomes a little kinder and gentler than they'd care to be. So I propose that, in the absence of a mechanism to eject Kansas from the union, we no longer call it Kansas. I propose, from now on, that we call it Flyover Country instead.

Around the table: includes more anti-Obama lies debunked like I should be spending any damn time doing that.

Apparently, not only did the CBO not say that the Affordable Care Act would kill jobs, the CBO said the Affordable Care Act would actually reduce unemployment. How? Roughly, the people who will benefit most from the Affordable Care Act will have more money to spend on stuff, which means businesses will need more workers to make that stuff. You know how that works, even if Republicans don't (or pretend not to).

Beware, good citizens, of this corporatist meme I hadn't heard about before: calling bills aiming to block local governments from banning pesticides or genetically-modified food "right to farm" bills. A right for whom, one wonders? After all, I know hundreds of folks growing tomatoes in their backyards who'd just love to get their hands on some Frankenseed. Kidding, of course -- nobody wants to recreate Monsanto's "achievements" in their backyards, and only big corporations "need" the "right" to contaminate.

Uh oh: Kansas Republican Senator Pat Roberts apparently doesn't actually spend very much time in Kansas, and folks (including at least one primary challenger) are starting to notice. He might not get "Lugared," though -- he's tacking noticeably to the right, he doesn't have Richard Mourdock fighting him in the primary, and (people forget this for some reason!) he hasn't committed an act of apostasy to the banksters, as Mr. Lugar did when he voted in favor of capping some of their fees.

Republicans who dig out the AMURIKAN CAESAR!!! line against President Obama may want to consider that he's issued fewer Executive Orders than any President over the last 100 years except for Bush the Better. They may also want to consider that not getting your way on every last little thing builds character, or that stamping your feet about a President exercising authority Congress delegates him makes you look like a diaper-loaded brat.

Finally, the House Armed Services Committee concludes that the Obama Administration did not order our military to "stand down" during the Benghazi terrorist attack, nor could our military have done very much to change the outcome of that attack. Next up on Fox News: how Barack Obama got to Buck McKeon. After all, the House Armed Services Committee Chair is retiring; do we dare call that mere coincidence?

Around the table: right-wing values, our values, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny.

Richard Kirsch reminds us that when Republicans vote to cut food stamps and Medicare and such, those are "statements of values." He also reminds us that right-wingers believe "it’s an infringement on a person’s freedom to be taxed to take care of someone else" -- but actual conservatives (versus the reactionaries who call themselves "conservative") don't necessarily believe that, since they also know how (for example) the interstate highway system works. (As an aside, boy am I sick of knuckledraggers calling it "free health care." Even single-payer wouldn't be free -- you'd pay for it, as a taxpayer. Is that why it's free? Because you pay for it?)

Time magazine "helps" you "understand" our ongoing cold war with Iran with a helpful graphic -- that begins in 1979. Because, of course, if it didn't directly affect us in the form of (to think of a hypothetical situation) hostage-taking at an embassy, it didn't really happen. Remember this timeline from CNN from a few years ago, which also started in 1979? It's like the "liberal" media never, ever learns. More likely, that's just what they want us to think.

Kentucky's "KYnect" health exchange -- entirely state-run, but set up with funding from, and under the authority of, the Affordable Care Act -- has a great first day, enrolling almost 3,000 individuals and families in health care coverage. Sadly, not everyone in Kentucky proves well-informed about KYnect -- one thinks it was "defunded," while another "hope(s)" "it beats Obamacare." They probably want government to keep its hands off Medicare, too.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (S-PA) thinks it was "inappropriate" for his Administration's lawyers to compare gay marriage with children marrying -- but then remarks that "a much better analogy would have been brother and sister." I've got a "much better analogy" for Tom Corbett: he's a lot like that ancient, bitter uncle who has a few too many and then thinks everything he says is funny and brilliant.

And finally, some good news: remember that 15-year-old rape victim whom the Maldives government was preparing to flog in public in March? Well, the Maldives High Court overturned the sentence last month. Note well that a global shame campaign conducted by Avaaz (in which you might have participated) just so happened to precede the High Court's decision. We might have helped save only one person, but often that's where the arc of justice starts.

Around the table: starring a now-infamous Congressman and a relatively famous conservative with doubts about Republicans.

Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) suggests that the shutdown is "my idea of fun." You know what my idea of fun would be? Running that line in negative TV ads for eight weeks in the fall of 2014 until David Schweikert loses his re-election bid to either a dead guy or a shrub.

Now the shutdown posturing has even Rod Dreher thinking of voting Democrat, "because it has gotten to the point where they don’t unnerve me like the Republicans." And he throws Russell Kirk at the Republicans, just like any sane and normal person would do -- even declares Republicans are not conservatives, but radicals, and yes I got there seven years before he did, but I take the Parable of the Prodigal Son seriously. Still, he gives Rand Paul too much credit -- Mr. Paul's "leadership" on foreign policy and civil liberties has given us bupkus so far, and that may be by design.

Meanwhile, Mother Jones instructs us in re who the shutdown screws the hardest. Really, suppress the urge to say yeah, poor people, what else is new and read the whole thing, lest you miss the part where 94 percent of the EPA gets furloughed. Or the part where OSHA won't be able to inspect factories. Or the part where GIPSA won't be able to do food inspections. But, yeah, WIC funding drying up is still bad for poor people.

Finally, the New York Times reports about the growing textile and apparel manufacturing industry in the U.S. Yes, that's right, as foreign textile factories burn to the ground and corporations suddenly remember the considerable advantages of keeping the manufacturing process relatively local, this sort of manufacturing is coming back -- but the workers aren't there, having been, you know, outsourced to foreign lands many years ago. At least some organizations (like the Makers Coalition in Minnesota) are trying to train these workers again. But it is kinda sad to hear a corporate president say "if we want good workers we know we have to train them and bring them in ourselves," because every corporation should do that.

Around the table: home health workers get vital work protections, and other stories.

Good news, everyone: the Obama Administration's Labor Department issued a new rule extending minimum wage and overtime protections to home health care workers. The new rule still exempts folks who provide occasional companionship to seniors, but not the vast majority of workers who bathe, dress, and toilet seniors (often several seniors per day). You probably advocated for this change over the last year-plus, so good job!

FAIR catches USA Today failing to check Republican assertions that too many people get food stamps or that the vicious food stamp bill passed Thursday would "restore() integrity to the program." And thus FAIR provides another lesson that "balance" -- or, more precisely, symmetry -- isn't the same thing as fairness. And would it have killed USA Today to note that our government lets more people get food stamps for good reasons?

Speaking of food stamps, intrepid constituent posts lengthy New Testament passage protesting Rep. Kevin Cramer's vote in favor of the Cantor food stamp bill -- and Rep. Cramer responds with a quotation from Paul's 2nd Epistle to the Thessalonians: "If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat." Ahem: a lot of folks who get food stamps are already working, and if they're not making enough money to feed themselves, that's largely because corporations don't pay them enough. Also, you don't fight Jesus with Paul.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) delivers a scathing indictment of mandatory minimum laws and the War on Drugs -- suggests that drug-related incarceration has become the new Jim Crow, notes that while most drug dealers and offenders are white, most folks getting put in jail for all that are black, the whole nine yards. Good speech, but again: let's see if Mr. Paul's words lead to action.

Surprise, surprise -- Citizens for Tax Justice finds that the states so often praised as "low-tax" states, well, aren't, at least not for the working poor. Click through and you'll detect a theme: these states levy big sales and excise taxes, but have low (or nonexistent!) income taxes, and sales taxes always hit the poor harder, because, you know, the poor have to spend all their money just to get by.

Head of Amsterdam's health service says sugar should be just as tightly regulated as tobacco and alcohol, because it's "the most dangerous drug of the times." I'd be inclined to agree, and not just because I've had the damndest time cutting down on sugar, a much worse time than I've had cutting down on caffeine -- truth is, we're learning more and more about how sugar makes us fat. Would I insist on limiting the amount of sugar food processing corporations can add to food? I don't know. But I do know that we need to stop propping up high-fructose corn syrup producers with handouts.

Finally, Buzzfeed finds that "30 or 40" Tea Party House Republicans are forcing Speaker Boehner to the ideological right. Myself, I think that's what he wants us to think. But dig Rep. Schock's assertion at the end that "(i)f the majority of our members are bomb throwers, our leadership has no other choice but to acquiesce." Actually, Mr. Schock, leadership could, you know, lead.

Around the table: stockbrokers vs. their clients, Germans vs. the NSA, corporations vs. work, sin taxes vs. working folk, Louisiana poll respondents vs. the truth, and the Koch brothers vs. the people (and the people win!).

Both the Labor Department and the SEC are apparently mulling rules (again, mandated by Dodd-Frank and what's taking them so long?) making stockbrokers act as fiduciaries -- which is to say they'd have to work entirely on behalf of their clients and not for themselves. Former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) responds that Wall Street won't be able to service small investors if they actually have to act on their behalf. No, really, that's essentially what he said. And this has been another installment of "The Uselessness of Republican 'Moderates'."

Germans seem to respond more negatively to the news of American domestic snooping than Americans do, and ProPublica explains why. Long story short: Germans generally agitate for privacy rights more than Americans do (at least since the end of World War II), and Germans just so happen to be the NSA's favorite target, as the NSA has collected more metadata from Germany than from any other European nation. Not to be discounted: that Germans' experience with agencies like the SS and the Gestapo is more recent than Americans' experience with Redcoats bursting into their houses whenever they felt like it.

David Graeber explains why we don't all work 15-hour work weeks, as John Maynard Keynes once predicted we would. It's like the we-were-promised-jetpacks bit, except that we were promised something more interesting and useful than jetpacks. Long story very short: our economy destroys real work (via technological advances and outsourcing, certainly, but mainly through corporate "populism" against those "parasite" schoolteachers and dockworkers), and then creates all sorts of paper-pushing "work" for us to do, "work" that, perhaps not coincidentally, teaches us to align our needs with that of our economic elites.

Pennsylvania mulls SB 1080, which would enact a 2¢ fee on every plastic bag used. Put me down as opposing that sort of thing, though: small though the tax is, it'll hit working folks harder than it'll hit the 0.1%, and I don't know anyone who doesn't reuse these plastic bags, frequently more than once. It is kind of a necessity when you're not rich, you know.

Public Policy Polling finds that while 28% of surveyed Louisiana residents blame George W. Bush for our government's lackluster response to Hurricane Katrina, an astounding 29% blame Barack Obama, though Mr. Obama wouldn't be President for three more years. And 44% more just can't decide! Seriously, when confronted with this level of stupidity, it's getting harder and harder for me to convince people that the Obama-hate is mostly because he's a Democrat, not because he's black.

Last but certainly not least, the Koch brothers have decided not to purchase the Tribune Company newspapers. A Koch Industries spokeshack says the brothers still "have an interest in the media business," but no longer, apparently, in papers such as the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Hartford Courant. Who stood against the Koch brothers? Nobody but us. So celebrate, and then come back tomorrow ready to do more good works.

Around the table: Barack Obama, banksters, frackers, activist judges, and a rodeo clown.

Mike Whitney, who was all over the financial crisis before any of our prized "liberal" media reporters were, absolutely eviscerates President Obama's new housing plan. Long story short: Mr. Obama has now accepted the right-wing lie that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the cause of the housing crisis, when even Forbes will tell you that 85% of all subprime mortgages were privately held -- and his new plan puts bankster profits above his own duties to the citizenry. Anyone who still calls Mr. Obama a "socialist" deserves a punch in the nose.

In a related note, a just-unsealed lawsuit from 2011 suggests that mortgage-holders still simply don't own the houses upon which they foreclose, simply because they don't have the correct documents. Now our government stepped in and "settled" this imbroglio for $95 million -- but they only settled with five defendants, meaning the original plaintiff can now go after the other 23 defendants. And while it's regrettable that our government's settlement did shield Bank of Amerikkka and J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo from further action, the remaining 23 defendants ain't exactly small-fry.

Get your surprised face ready: gas drilling corporations find ways not to pay royalties to landowners. I'm sure energy lobby says gas corporations should get to deduct expenses such as processing and transportation, but some corporations deduct them even when their contracts with landowners prohibit it. And setting up subsidiaries to which they "sell" the gas cheaply might be legal, strictly speaking, but I oppose any corporation owning any other corporation, so I'm not impressed. And some folks find telling landowners to do their due diligence a lot easier than telling corporations to do right by landowners. I wonder why.

A Tennessee judge forces a couple to change the name of their seven-month old boy from Messiah to Martin, because "(t)he word Messiah is a title and it's a title that has only been earned by one person and that one person is Jesus Christ." Citing reams of case law, no doubt! I can't feel too bad for the parents, since they were only in court because they couldn't agree on the kid's last name, but what a shame to find that activist judges have even infiltrated child support courts.

Finally, a Missouri rodeo clown dons an Obama mask, while an announcer asks the crowd if they want to see "Obama run down by a bull." Just imagine the reaction from the right if some liberal had done something similar to George W. Bush.

Court martial judge finds PFC Bradley Manning guilty of 20 charges relating to his release of information about America's "war on terror" to WikiLeaks -- but not the "aiding the enemy" charge. That last item promotes the common good, I suppose, but when is anyone from Tha Bush Mobb going to jail?

Mr. Obama again offers to cut the corporate tax rate as part of an imagined "Grand Bargain" on jobs. I think all this bargaining misses the whole point of governing -- if Mr. Obama's supposed to negotiate with anyone, it's the American people, who have no great yearning to lower the corporate tax rate.

The U.K.'s proposed anti-pornography firewall will also "protect" folks from "web forums" and "esoteric material." And here I'm reminded, yet again, that British PM David Cameron has worked as a politician for most of his life -- at least Margaret Thatcher was a scientist, which is why she didn't believe the big corporations when they told her CFCs had little to do with ozone depletion.

David Dayen reminds us that while the Justice Department has gone after a reality TV celebrity for mortgage fraud, it hasn't gone after any banks for mortgage fraud, though a reasonable case against the banks would rather closely resemble the case the Justice Department will pursue against the Giudices. FTW: "Banks have been found to systematically lie to bankruptcy courts, yet their executives don’t appear on TV shows tossing over furniture and getting into slap fights, so they commit these crimes with impunity." And that is all.

R.J. Eskow's piece called "Tom Friedman: A New Ayn Rand for a Dark Digital Future" crossed my filters a half-dozen times before I read it. Each time I saw it I said I know, right? But those chores ain't gonna do themselves! But it's actually even more incisive, and chilling, than it sounds. So read it, even if you already know the story -- and not just for turns of phrase like "Panglossian panegyric."

Ed Kilgore notes that former Pennsylvania Gov. William Scranton (R-PA) and former Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr. -- who both died this past week, at a combined age of 194! -- belonged to an America we'd have a hard time getting our heads around today. Mr. Scranton was a fairly liberal Republican, back when Lyndon Johnson needed a bunch of them to pass civil rights legislation, and Mr. Byrd was a far-right Democrat back when most Southern Democrats belonged to a "conservative coalition." Strange times -- almost as strange as these times.

You thought it was bad enough that our government could collect all our data? Behold: a New York federal judge will allow Chevron to vacuum in nine years of activists' email data in its never-ending quest to reverse a $19 million judgment against it for crapping all over Ecuador in the late 1990s. Judge Kaplan says it's not a First Amendment issue because Chevron isn't asking for the metadata of any American citizens -- except that, whoops, their dragnet does sweep up some Americans. Don't judges have to know the facts before they judge? And don't feel safe that Chevron targets mainly non-Americans -- under a Trans-Pacific "Partnership" regime, your First Amendment rights won't mean very much before the "investor tribunals" who'll replace our courts and our laws.

Paul Buchheit puts forth a fairly concise and impassioned case for a financial transaction tax. It might take a few years before a financial transaction tax (Mr. Buchheit talks .01% here, and that's one one-hundredth of one percent, "liberal" media) actually discourages all the unnecessary faster-than-light trading in America -- but it'll raise a good chunk of change in the meantime. Too bad our President listens to Larry Summers (now apparently jockeying for Ben Bernanke's job!) about such matters.

Bloomberg suggests that Mitch McConnell is "shrinking from his longtime role as a broker of high-stakes congressional deals" now that he's getting a primary challenge from his right. Ah, can you think of a single "high-stakes deal" Mr. McConnell has "brokered" over the last few years? Me neither.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) says he and a dozen other Republican Senators would be willing to "shut down the government" so he can block implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Boy, think of how mad they'd be if Mr. Obama had spent six months ramming through a moderate or liberal health care plan! Seriously, though, these clowns think a bajillion Americans would run through a wall to defeat the Affordable Care Act, but unpopularity just doesn't translate directly into rage. And the Clown Car already shot their wad with the "death panels" lie.

And finally, a naked, 42-year-old Iowa man got busted for breaking car tail lights last week, because "red means danger to the republic." Next week, he'll get a ladder so he can bust up some traffic lights -- and then those Commies all around him will take notice!

Now Daily Kos calls on Harry Reid to do away with the filibuster for Presidential appointees and judicial nominees. I reject this call -- rather, I call upon the Senate to make their members sustain a filibuster by actually talking for hours on end about a subject. But this short-sightedness is appalling -- does Daily Kos not remember that a mere eight years ago Republicans wanted to eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominees? Do they remember what they thought about it then? I do. I hope Mr. Reid merely means to make Mr. McConnell cave on a few nominees, like Messrs. Perez and Cordray.

David Koch thinks getting rid of the minimum wage will help the poor. Because getting fewer dung pellets always helps them! As a side issue: does a putative "avalanche of regulations" create "a culture of dependency"? I think regulation prevents a culture of dependency -- a culture of dependency upon corporations. And it's hard to say you're "dependent on government" when it's your government. One more thing: when Mr. Koch talks about "the mobility of labor" I'm pretty sure he wants to exercise that mobility, not you.

As you know, federally-subsidized student loan rates doubled on July 1, and the Senate, again, couldn't agree on a way to cut it back. Which is to say, only 51 of 100 Senators wanted to keep the old 3.4% rate. I maintain that getting rid of the filibuster is not a solution -- if we made Senators work for their filibusters, they'd make fools of themselves and they'd filibuster less. Speaking of fools, I'm starting to wonder whether we'd all have been better off with another term for a do-nothing moderate in Maine than with Angus King.

From the "This Used to Be the Future" file: CNN wonders why we don't all work 15-hour weeks, like our intelligentsia thought we would by now. And takes 11 paragraphs to get to the obvious answer: because we wouldn't make enough money! And still mainly blames consumerism, which I'll grant doesn't help. Should I give them credit for noting, right off the bat in paragraph 11, that "income gains (in recent decades) have been disproportionately distributed"? Not as much as I'd give them if they'd said "technology has made workers more productive -- and delivered the wealth that production created to their bosses."

Indiana "reforms" its criminal code, with the "unintended" consequence that any same-sex couple filing for a marriage license in Indiana could get 18 months in jail! Also, any state official or clergy member performing a gay marriage could get six months in jail. The Supreme Court would strike down that restriction on Indiana clergy with a quickness. No, I'm not kidding.

Finally, Elizabeth Hasselback, until two days ago the token right-winger on ABC's The View, will join Fox and Friends in the middle of September. And THAT! IS THE MOST! SURPRISING! THING! I! HAVE EVER! HEARD!

From the EVERTHING IZ TERRORIZM!!!! file: Tennessee Department of Environment official claims that baseless complaints about water quality comprise "an act of terrorism" "under Homeland Security." I guess if Mr. Smith feels "terrorized" by what most bureaucrats would find irritating, he can always go see a therapist -- unless, of course, he's just trying to intimidate folks into keeping their mouth shut about water so bad they have to boil it.

Paul Ryan blames Democrats for the farm bill's defeat in the House -- ignoring the poison pill amendment Republicans rammed through mere minutes before the vote -- but also reminds us that he didn't vote for the farm bill, either. Then he treats us to a paragraph of bloviating about Congressfolk "keeping their word" with each other, instead of the more pertinent problem of whether Congressfolk keep their word with the people they represent.

Republican Congressional aide still calls himself the "undisputed SNAP challenge champion," even though he actually failed to feed himself on food stamp money for a week. He had "an unexpected trip," after all, and so he couldn't do it the way he was supposed to. These Republicans, always needing to bend the rules to get anything done! Anyone heard of Donny Ferguson before this week? No? Now let's never speak of him again.

ProPublica tells us just about everything we need to know about Abigail Fisher's affirmative action case, which the Supreme Court just bumped back down to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Long story short: Ms. Fisher's whiteness almost certainly didn't keep her off the University of Texas's Austin campus, or her lawyers would have spent more time arguing that -- and she didn't even finish in the top 10 percent of her class or get a gang-busters SAT score, which somewhat undercuts her own "work hard and be rewarded" argument.

Finally, Maine Gov. Paul LePage has announced he'll no longer comment on stories published by three newspapers who have lately published stories critical of his Administration. Does Mr. LePage ever remember that he won with 38% of the vote?

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is "encouraged" by the Obama budget; specifically cites Social Security and Medicare cuts as signs of "leadership." I missed the part where all 300 million Americans are named Lindsey Graham.

Democrats recruit "non-ideological" "problem-solvers" for critical House races -- so they can all be turned out by extremely ideological problem-creators a few years later, just like they were in 2010. The definition of insanity, et cetera.

President Obama will give back 5% of his salary to the Treasury, mirroring the 5% cuts in the sequester. That move should have come a lot earlier. Even Chuck Hagel beat him to it by a day.

Mr. Obama apologizes for calling California Attorney General Kamala Harris the "best-looking" AG in the country. I heard more about this on the news this past week than a lot of more important things. It's almost like that's the idea -- no, his idea, too.

The Senate passed the Murray budget by a hair-thin 50 to 49 margin on Friday, and The Hill notes that the four Democrats who voted against the budget all happen to be up for re-election in 2014. At least three of these four have accounted for their votes, and I bet you can detect a theme: the Murray budget wasn't bipartisan enough, didn't compromise enough, though it approximates an actual middle ground between the Back to Work budget and the Ryan budget. Ms. Hagan wanted something more "balanced and bipartisan," Mr. Pryor decried "one-party solutions" just like David Boren used to, and Mr. Baucus's aide (because the man himself doesn't have to talk to you!) lamented that there was no "middle ground." (Nothing Mr. Begich says means a damn as long as he's bringing the bacon back home to Alaska.) It's like they have no faith they can present the Murray budget as the "middle ground" to their own constituents -- or that they're just trying to disappear one of the poles. Of these four, Mark Pryor, at least, is toast.

Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee informs us that the evangelical wing of the Republican Party will likely walk away if the Party ever embraces gay marriage. Whether threat or mere prediction, my immediate reaction is: one can only hope! And not just because the Republicans might come to their senses somewhat if evangelicals go their own way -- maybe evangelicals, in turn, will take some of Jesus's teachings a bit more to heart if they no longer have to learn somebody's party line on clean water regulations and capital gains taxes. I've long hoped that Mr. Huckabee, who used to promote the occasional economic stimulus when he was Arkansas Governor and who sometimes sounded populist on the 2008 campaign trail, might make that pilgrimage, too -- but if he's capable of obnoxiously suggesting that letting gays marry is like lowering basketball hoops so more people can score, then he's at least as capable of lying to himself about the "stimulative" "power" of tax cuts. I'd be happy to be wrong about that, of course.

why would Tha Bush Mobb attack Iran?

Scott Ritter -- one-time U.N. weapons inspector and one-time Bush supporter until he said, in October 2002, that he didn't think Saddam Hussein had WMDs -- says that although the reality-based community knows attacking Iran is a bad idea, Tha Bush Mobb will still do it. Iran's ability to hurt the American economy, after all, hasn't changed with the Iranians' recent repudiation of their erstwhile President -- as I've said, an attack would empower Mr. Ahmedinejad in the eyes of his people, and once the U.S. is able to provoke or fake a Tonkin Gulf-style incident, Iran can (as Ritter says) take its oil off the market, stop oil production elsewhere in the Middle East, and close the Strait of Hormuz so no one else can ship oil, either. You like gas prices now? You'll really, really like them when the market is a lot more volatile, and your pocketbook will scream uncle, Ritter says, within two days. Ritter also suggests that American businesses don't want war with Iran either, because they have pocketbooks, too. So why would Tha Bush Mobb, having faced its own repudiation at the polls a month and a half ago, having most of its ground troops locked down in an unpopular ground war, think attacking Iran is a good idea?

To answer this question, we first must ignore the propaganda Tha Bush Mobb (and their votaries in the "liberal media") feeds us. Tha Bush Mobb doesn't particularly care about democracy in the Middle East. Tha Bush Mobb isn't acting crazy in an effort to get better behavior out of other crazy people. And Tha Bush Mobb doesn't understand Iran -- Iranian kids won't "rise up" in case of invasion, but prefer to change their country their own way, thank you very much, and international organizations have found no evidence that Iran is making nukes (versus enriching uranium, which they're permitted to do as signers of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). Tha Bush Mobb doesn't even particularly love Israel; nor are they particularly concerned about the flow of oil to the West -- wouldn't we be filling up on less than a buck a gallon if that were so?

What does that leave? I think it leaves Tha Bush Mobb's sole motive in attacking Iraq, which was making their crony corporations rich. No other explanation makes as much sense -- I don't think Tha Bush Mobb serves Israel's ends, for example, but uses Israel to further its own ends. Tha Bush Mobb won't be able to occupy Iran and rip off the American taxpayer in a phony "reconstruction" scheme as they've been able to do in Iraq -- Iran, you may know, has a lot more people, and you see how hard it is to keep the Iraqis down. But Tha Bush Mobb only has two years left in power to make off with all the cash they can -- Tha Bush Mobb doesn't care about oil the way you and I care about oil, but they do care about oil the way their buddies in the oil industry care about oil, and in the event of the "volatility" in the market, their oil industry cronies will make a mint, even if the American businesses talking to Senator Lugar suffer.

In other words, we're looking at the banality of evil here. We're not looking at Tha Bush Mobb gloating about their ability to enact "bold" policy or "get things done." We're looking at them gloating about their ability to steal taxpayer money. Please understand that (all together now!) I don't say these things to depress you. I say them in the perhaps vain hope (vain as in "arrogant" as well as vain as in "fruitless") that perhaps saying them aloud will help stop them from happening. It certainly can't hurt.

Mr. Ahmedinejad's bogus journey.

This has not been a good week for Iran's erstwhile President, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. Hard to believe, isn't it? After all, everyone knows that hosting a conference full of Holocaust-denying historians right before an election is a sure winner. But his hard-line supporters apparently won a mere twenty percent of city council seats in Friday's nationwide elections, including 3 of 15 in Teheran, so now Mr. Ahmedinejad can't go ahead with his long-planned Engineers Against Physics conference. Moderate conservatives appear to have won the lion's share of council seats, while Khatami-esque reformers did much better than they did in recent years. Student demonstrations have also picked up in frequency, which is miraculous. Maybe there's not that much daylight between a moderate conservative and a hard-liner, especially in a state that concentrates so much power at the top. But the Iranian people still deserve a lot of credit for rejecting Mr. Ahmedinejad's agenda. And the students demonstrating against him are heroes and heroines. In the U.S., student demonstrators get followed around by the FBI and the CIA and might get their houses broken into, but in Iran they stand a greater chance of getting the crap kicked of them on the spot, and you tell me which is more persuasive. Those kids are a lot more courageous than I.

Of course, Mr. Bush (thought I'd forgotten, didn't you?) can claim exactly none of the credit for this, no matter how many Western media outlets claim the vote is a mandate against Mr. Ahmedinejad's anti-Americanism. Could it be possible that the Iranian people do not weigh every decision in terms of how it relates to the United States? Many citizens of many countries, believe it or not, have been known to ignore the United States altogether when they enter their country's voting booth. Mr. Ahmedinejad's main domestic problem is not terribly different from Mr. Bush's main domestic problem -- an economy whose growth benefits the rich far more than it benefits the poor. A country that makes that much oil and that has embarked on an, er, ambitious nuclear program should not have 40% of its citizens sitting below the poverty line. Sure there are reformers in Iran who've made better relations with the West part of their plank, but I'd look to the poverty line to understand these results before I'd look toward the West.

"we create our own reality" (plus bonus "Dr. Who" reference!).

Missive I've written to John Moody, Senior Vice President at TV Pravda, about The O'Reilly Factor's recent graphic depiction of Rep. Mark Foley as a Democrat.  Later reruns of that night's Factor removed the graphic -- rather than doing the honorable thing, which would include substituting "D-FL" with "R-FL," calling attention to the correction, and apologizing for the error.  Factor executive producer David Tabacoff apparenlty sees no reason for an on-air correction as of yet.

Dear Mr. Moody,

I write to inform you, if you are not aware, that Tuesday night's O'Reilly Factor misidentified former Rep. Mark Foley as a Democrat, and that the show's production team has not as of yet issued an on-air correction.

Certainly you are aware that many Americans view Fox News as a mouthpiece of the Republican Party, rather than the "world-class news organization" which is your stated aim.  The Factor's misidentification of Mr. Foley's political orientation will only entrench that perception -- as, indeed, it already has on MSNBC's Countdown and Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

I look forward to swift, decisive, and bold action from you on this matter.

Thank you,

I'd presumed that the Republicans were going to have trouble rebounding from the Foley affair.  But once again I'd underestimated the willingness of their media operatives to stoop to any subterranean level to keep Republicans in the majority in Congress.  A Cyberman's analysis of my failure to anticipate this particular evil might be that hope makes a man weak, and  certainly imagining the worst from right-wingers is, for me, a matter of practice and discipline.  (Making jokes about it is, of course, the province of the more spiritually-advanced among us, like Jon Stewart.)

(Hat tip to Mediachannel.org and bradblog.)

Goofus invades Iraq, but Gallant fights the real enemy.

Washington Times editor Tony Blankley tries a different tack toward the liberals who don't talk to him anymore:  he digs out his OED and recasts the term "appeasement" as "in and of itself" "neither inherently unwise or immoral," thus (he hopes) prompting a serious discussion of the supposed desire of some three-fifths of Americans for "appeasement" of "radical Islam."  I thought the enemy was al-Qaeda, but never mind that, and never mind that Mr. Blankley probably started with the challenge "prove liberals are wrong to be offended by the label 'appeaser' in a brand new way."  I call smartypants.

We'll begin with Mr. Blankley's essential point, that such "appeasements" as changing our foreign policy or being more politically correct won't effectively neutralize radical Islamists, because they are "irreconcilable and unlimited in their goals," and because of this, "(a) maximum effort to extirpate the malignancy is the only and best defense for our way of life."  I've always agreed that al-Qaeda should be "extirpated, but intentions aren't actions, and "unlimited goals" does not prove "unlimited power" and certainly doesn't justify "maximum efforts" like unlimited war.  Al-Qaeda, as I've said before, doesn't have a state to back them up like Hitler or Stalin did.  A state wold give al-Qaeda access to (among other means to power) laws, arms, diplomats, and the ability to browbeat dissenters, which always exist, even within al-Qaeda.  And does having the aim of world domination automatically confer the tactical ability to ensure the achievement of world domination?  How close will al-Qaeda be to "world domination" after the next terrorist attack, especially now that most of the world is looking for them?  Will "infiltration" of American and European societies by radical Muslims work as well as Mr. Blankley seems to think, or will too many of them get addicted to PlayStation and HBO and text messaging and football like everyone else?

Worse than that, of course, is that Tony Blankley (like so, so many other Bush Mobbers) presents false opposites:  he thinks "appeasement," as he's defined it, and neutralizing terrorists are completely incompatible concepts.

But why on earth can't you do both?

If someone I may have wronged, in however indirect a way, comes at me with a gun, I'm not going to sit them down to tea; I'm going to put a slug in their posterior regions.  But once I've neutralized the threat, the only thing preventing me from correcting what I did wrong is pride.  And nothing prevents Tha Bush Mobb from correcting any of the errors we've made in the last half-century or so of dealing with the Middle East -- you know, errors like treating the area like a big chessboard, and treating its citizens like cattle who happen to be sitting on massive amounts of oil.

Aggressively targeting al-Qaeda cells all over the world is not incompatible with forging a solution to the Israel/Palestine mess that guarantees both a Palestinian state and Israel's survival, but Tha Bush Mobb has done nothing toward that end.  Aggressively targeting al-Qaeda is not incompatible with researching and developing alternative energy sources, but Tha Bush Mobb has paid only lip service to that end even as gas prices have doubled.  Aggressively targeting al-Qaeda is not incompatible with reining in corporations as they look for new resources to steal and new peoples to enslave, but...well, you see where that's going under Mr. Bush.  All of the programs I've suggested would shrink the potential pool of new terrorists, whether slaves to "the free market" or "bold thinking" like it or not.  You'll still have terrorists, because you'll still have nuts.  But wouldn't they be easier to contain if there were fewer of them?

There are many other points with which to quarrel with Mr. Blankley (no it's not "surveillance of Muslims" I oppose but "warrantless surveillance" so stop yer damn lying), but paragraph 19 is the most telling.  "This is an issue of threat assessment," Mr. Blankley says.  "The appeasers don't see the threat as so great.  Thus they think we are overreacting and even adding to the problem."  I guess he says "even" to suggest how outlandish it is that Tha Bush Mobb is "adding to the problem."  Of course Mr. Blankley doesn't defend himself against the accusation, because if he did, he'd have to utter a word that appears nowhere in his article.  And that word is?

Iraq.

why I did not give money to the DNC for the ten millionth time.

Text of a letter I've written to James Carville.

Dear Mr. Carville,

You asked me “a blunt question” in your recent letter on behalf of the Democratic National Committee. You asked, “why are you sitting out one of the most critical fights we Democrats have ever faced” by failing to renew my DNC membership. Well, I’ll give you a blunt answer: I’m not a Democrat any more. I’m now unaffiliated with either major party (or, indeed, any of the self-absorbed minor ones) because I finally realized it’s folly to stand by the party that doesn’t stand by me.

And I’ll give you a longer answer: I’m not “sitting out” the 2006 race by not giving money to the DNC, as if giving money to the DNC is the only way to effect change in American politics. It’s not my job, as a citizen, to give the DNC money and then hope the Democrats can bring America back if they win. My job, as a citizen, is to offer my counsel to my elected Representatives on the issues that concern our nation, and then help others do the same. I do these things by calling and writing to my elected representatives, and by writing a blog, called “Thieves in the Temple,” found at http://amento.typepad.com/thieves, which others can use to contact their elected officials more easily. I don’t work with the Democratic Party in this latter endeavor; rather, I pass along the email alerts I receive from organizations whose work I believe in, including Common Cause, Unionvoice, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Yes, the Republicans are thieves and bullies and liars and they hate what’s good about America and I’ll take my anger toward them to my grave. But so what? I’m supposed to respond by supporting the party whose 2004 standard-bearers played games (and continue to play games) with their 2002 support of the Iraq war? Whose members will not defend higher taxes on the super-rich as the moral duty of a healthy society? Whose members caved on tort reform so-called and on bankruptcy reform so-called? Whose members will not defend universal health care (which a vast majority of Americans support) even on the grounds that it would be more fiscally responsible than the Chaplinesque system we now have? Whose members apparently take their cue to have backbone on Estate Tax repeal from Lincoln Chafee and George Voinovich? My own Senator, up for re-election in 2006, voted in favor of the flag-burning amendment. In doing so he decided that the will of the Founders when they wrote the First Amendment -- one of the highest achievements of Western Civilization -- was less important than the will of the weaklings and emotional cripples whose poor little eyes would burn out if they saw some idiot burning a flag. What’s more, of course, is that, over the next two months, Karl Rove will unleash an onslaught of fearmongering that’ll make Mr. Bush’s first-term seem like a Charlotte Brontë novel, and you guys won’t have the guts to stand up and fight for your honor, because you’ll be too busy “not alienating the independent voter” or whatever.

Yet, I’m “sitting out” if I don’t give you guys money, in addition to the actually useful work I do. That’s a profoundly insulting suggestion, Mr. Carville, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself for making it.

Please remove me, with a quickness, from your mailing list.

Thank you for your time and attention.

(I know James Carville won't really remove me from the mailing list. Hopefully, if he even gets this letter, he'll at least pass it on to the person in charge of that.)