What’s it like inside a climate change deniers conference? A mix of the comically surreal, the deadly earnest and the achingly tedious.

Dems mocking Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) over campaign’s email plea for supporters to join him in Independence Day parade.

Evan McMorris-Santoro reports from the climate change deniers conference being held this week in DC.

Strict new regulations set to go into effect tomorrow in Kansas are purportedly intended to ensure that abortion clinics are safe and hygienic, but the new regs look an awful lot like a backdoor attempt to shut down abortion providers.

The ostensible news today is that the Justice Department is conducting full criminal investigations into the deaths of two Bush-era detainees while in CIA custody.

But let’s consider the historic implications. The President of the United States set up an officially authorized system of off-the-book, extralegal prisons and a regimen of government-sanctioned torture; and the consequences of this dark period will be — at most — two criminal prosecutions.

If you’re of a mind to get outraged over the substance of today’s Mark Halperin pseudo-controversy, Alex Pareene has the best rationale for doing so.

FEC approves advisory opinion for Stephen Colbert to form his PAC.

Let me predicate this by saying that one justice putting another justice in a chokehold — as allegedly happened on the Wisconsin Supreme Court — would be so beyond the pale that it defies explanation by examining the ideological and political divisions of the court.

Having said that, the ideological and political rifts that have developed on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in recent years do provide some context for the alleged incident involving Justices Ann Walsh Bradley and David Prosser — even if they don’t even begin to explain it. Eric Kleefeld has our report.

The somnambulant press corps has been aroused from its summer torpor by the kind of controversy that sends DC into a tizzy: Mark Halperin called President Obama a “dick” on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today.

MSNBC has apologized and suspended Halperin. Halperin has apologized and agreed that he should be suspended.

It’s given one half of DC the chance to acknowledge that Halperin himself is a dick. The other half is wringing its hands over the level of our “discourse.”

Rest assured that within a week we can all go back to being dicks again.