Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s lead over Republican nominee Joe Miller is now up to 10,400 votes. In response to his vanishing chances of pulling out a win, Miller is demanding a recount of all the ballots statewide — not just the write-in ballots for Murkowski that have been the focus of his legal efforts. Looks like it’s just a matter of time now before this race can be called for Murkowski.

Jon Stewart to Charlie Rangel: “You’ve been under investigation for two years. How do you not have a lawyer?” Watch.

The full House Ethics Committee will decide in a hearing set to begin at noon tomorrow on what punishment it will recommend for Charlie Rangel.

How can Congressional Republicans trust President Obama when he comes off better than they do at their own media events? That’s not the sort of thing trust is built on.

The Politico has a story up tonight about how and why the bipartisan, everybody-get-along summit between President Obama and congressional Republicans ended up getting postponed. And a key part of it, according to Hill Republicans, is the GOP’s distrust of Obama after he “crashed” their caucus retreat last January. You’ll remember, this is when President Obama went and spoke at the House GOP retreat in Maryland and actually took pretty free-ranging questions from House Republicans — somewhat akin to ‘Question Time’ in the UK parliament. (See video of the event here.)

Now, because I think it’s essential to understand the point, I’m going to quote the first three grafs of the piece in full. Read More

Virginia, we’re told, is one of those states that went blue in 2010 but has now bounced back to its reddish norm. But the first poll looking at 2012 presidential matchups shows President Obama beating all four Republican frontrunners — two by 11 points.

We’ll see a lot of polls over the next couple years. And certainly Obama can’t take Virginia for granted, to put it mildly. But it’s an instructive example of how you can easily read too much into a low turnout midterm election.

Just out from The Forward …

The espionage case against two senior officials of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington was dropped last year. But it has not been forgotten, and is now threatening to draw the lobby into new depths of mudslinging.

Papers filed in the civil lawsuit of former lobbyist Steve Rosen against his previous employers at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee include mutual accusations of using pornographic material at the lobby headquarters, among other allegations. The papers, based on depositions taken from Rosen and from AIPAC principles, dig into the private lives of the involved parties. They also reveal in detail the close ties AIPAC officials held with Israeli diplomats based in Washington.

Read the rest here.

Last night I noted Glenn Thrush’s scoop in Politico about how incoming Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) got all bent out of shape at that freshman orientation when he found out that he’d have to wait a month after being sworn into office to get his government run/subsidized health care. “This is the only employer I’ve ever worked for where you don’t get coverage the first day you are employed,” said Harris.

My sense when I found out about the story was that that kind of wait isn’t at all out of the ordinary if you’re not an affluent professional. Harris is an anesthesiologist. And sure enough, this recent study says the average amount of time a new employee has to wait to get on the company health care plan is just over 2 months. And about a third of people have to wait three months or more.

The Politico lead this morning with a piece on how incoming freshman Republicans were “vow[ing] not to repeat 1994.” But the funny thing is that for anyone who remembers 1994, the quotes from the newly elected folks sounds pretty much exactly like the crew from 1994. The message they’ve absorbed is 1) don’t request earmarks, 2) don’t get indicted and 3) don’t get caught having an affair. What they are pledging to do is not go native, not compromise and push for big changes fast. Read More