From WaPo ...

Michael S. Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, arranged for his 2006 Senate campaign to pay a defunct company run by his sister for services that were never performed, his finance chairman from that campaign has told federal prosecutors.

President Obama gives his support to the new stimulus bill, declaring that "perfect should not be the enemy of the absolutely necessary." Meanwhile, the Republican leadership lines up to indicate that they will still oppose it. That and other political news in today's TPMDC Saturday Roundup.

One of the interesting side lights to the Stimulus Bill fight is that it's given John McCain an angle to get his ego and anger engaged again in the political fray. McCain went on the floor today with a harsh response to President Obama's speech yesterday before the House Democrats.

Why no calls for an up or down vote on the real bill?

So Senate Republicans invoked the threat of a filibuster. And the 'centrist' group has leveraged that threat to add more tax cuts that won't accomplish anything and cut out a lot of spending that would.

As the 'Day in 100 Seconds' diehards among you will have noticed, there was no episode today. That's because it was a special day in TPM land. While the editorial side of things went along more or less as usual today. It was with a skeleton staff, as our real world offices got packed up from the place we've worked out of for the last three years and moved to a new office about eight blocks away.

CNN reports that the Senate has a reached tentative deal for a $780 billion stimulus package.

Late Update: We're getting mixed signals on whether it's a done deal along the lines reported by CNN. Elana Schor reports.

The Coleman campaign has been nothing if not inconsistent during the three-month post-election saga in Minnesota, but nothing quite beats asking the court to now count ballots that the Coleman campaign itself succeeded in getting thrown out just a few weeks ago.

Late Update: Alas, the Coleman campaign has announced that two previously uncounted ballots were found by an election official in one county. It will never end.

Iowa guv turned Ag secretary pushing EPA for more ethanol in gasoline.

Mark Blumenthal looks at whether the stimulus plan is losing public support.

Looks like Harry Reid is telling negotiators on the stimulus bill that if they're going to cut the size of the spending provisions, then they should reduce some of the tax cuts in the bill, too.

Pam Hess reports:

The Obama administration will not prosecute CIA officers who participated in harsh interrogations that critics say crossed the line into torture, CIA Director-nominee Leon Panetta said Friday.

Asked by The Associated Press if that was official policy, Panetta said, "That is the case."

Obama will hit the road next week to sell the stimulus package, with stops in Gary Elkhart, Indiana, and Fort Myers, Florida, Robert Gibbs just announced in the daily press briefing.

It turns out that one of the Bushie burrowers in DOD's Office of Detainee Affairs was heavily involved in the Pentagon Pundits scandal.

A few days I ago, I chatted with Mike Lux, who was most recently a member of the Obama transition team as a liaison to progressives, about his new book, the present opportunity for dramatic change, and Obama's call for post-partisanship:

New polling shows why Obama is happy to make Rush Limbaugh the face of the GOP.

The ongoing financial crisis has done a pretty good job of demonstrating the outright moral decay of much of the financial sector. But sometimes, it's the small-scale, personal stories that are better at conveying that reality. TPMmuckraker's Zack Roth relates one man's horrifying experience with Bank of America.

The good stuff starts at about the 4:30 mark here.

Of all the places you'd be most concerned about Bush political appointees burrowing into career positions, the Pentagon's Office of Detainee Affairs (the folks who oversee Gitmo) would have to be near the top of the list, right?