Gov. Walker will start laying off state workers to pressure runaway Dem senators.

Remember, in that infamous crank call, when he thought he was talking to David Koch, Walker talked about using layoffs as a tool to pressure the unions and the Democrats to give in to his demands.

Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ): If Planned Parenthood is funded, me and other pro-life Republicans will vote to shut down the government.

With new job numbers out this morning still showing sluggish job growth, I commend to your attention this Chris Hayes essay on why Washington is literally out of touch with the unemployment crisis.

Yesterday evening, a Wisconsin state legislator was tackled and wrestled to the ground by Capitol police as he tried to enter the Capitol building. State Rep. Nick Milroy (D) had been holding constituent meetings at a desk on the Capitol lawn during the day and was apparently trying to enter the Capitol building to retrieve some clothes when Capitol police prevented him from entering the building. The video starts only at the point where the physical confrontation begins. So we’re currently working to get more information on the incident and precisely what actions led up to it. Watch the video.

Late Update: A Milroy staffer tells us Milroy was not arrested but only “restrained.” He’ll be issuing a statement shortly.

This is the best Jon Stewart segment in a long while: Fox’s double standard on compensation for Wall Street CEOs and public school teachers. Watch.

As the son of teachers, I hold a special grudge for teacher-bashers. Stewart is the son of a teacher, too, actually. So for all those teachers scraping by and struggling to stay in the vanishing middle class, this one is for you.

Ryan Reilly explores the rift between the Koran-burning and just straight up xenophobic wings of the Islamophobia movement.

Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White (R) indicted on seven felony counts including voter fraud, perjury and theft.

The heart of the case stems not from any ballot stuffing scheme but from White’s allegedly lying about his current place of residence, both for his voting but also, allegedly, to hold on to his town council seat. White was elected last November. The theory of the case, if I understand it correctly, is that for his Secretary of State campaign, White needed to hold on to his city council seat. And he couldn’t do that because he’d moved out of the jurisdiction. So he used a fraudulent address to make the whole thing work.

Worth noting that the Secretary of State is the state’s top election official. So an indictment on perjury and voter fraud charges creates an awkward situation.

When I came back to the office this afternoon I noticed we had a slideshow up on the National Medal of the Arts and National Humanities Medal ceremony today at the White House. And there’s a long list of luminaries you can see here. But it wasn’t until a bit later that I realized just who was included because one of these folks played a key role in my life.

The gentleman being congratulated here is Professor Gordon Wood. Many of you have probably read one or more of his books. But Wood was also my dissertation advisor in graduate school.

Yes, before I got into the journalism business I had a rather different life planned for myself. And I spent the better part of my twenties getting a PhD. Wood’s speciality is the Revolutionary Era, which is basically a subset of the Colonial American History specialty, though its reaches into the early 19th century. And my period was a little different. I did stuff in the 17th century, about a hundred years earlier, which is in many ways a totally different world from that of the mid-to-late 18th century. But I labored and learned under Wood’s insistence on precise argument and impatience with cant. And I learned a lot from him beside the specifics of the field we studied.

So Professor Wood, Congratulations.

We had one of those experiences today that must be unique at some level to this era of boffo and institutionalized expressions of The Crazy. As we told you a couple weeks ago, a guy from the UK had planned to lead a protest outside the White House calling for the United States to be brought under Sharia Law. So anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney and his group planned a counter-rally. And as you’d imagine this was just too much of a Godzilla v. Mothra moment for us to pass up. So we sent TPM Reporter Ryan Reilly over to watch what happened.

Well, the Muslim guy from the UK didn’t show up. So the point of Gaffney’s protest sort of dissolved. So Ryan’s there. And as Gaffney’s protest is breaking up, they see this Muslim guy praying. So folks from the Gaffney protest and other protestors drift over to where he is and start yelling at him and one of the protestors starts throwing crosses at his feet. That’s the story we reported a bit earlier this afternoon.

So a bit later we get an email from a reporter at Glenn Beck’s new website “TheBlaze”. He tells us that Gaffney’s group says our report is a “lie”, and what’s our response?

And here’s where the comedy goes all the way up to eleven. Read More

President Obama bestowed the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal to this year’s honorees in a White House ceremony yesterday that included Van Cliburn, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth, Quincy Jones, and, here, James Taylor:

But I was especially glad to see Wendell Berry honored: Read More