Reports coming in that President Obama will name Elizabeth Warren as interim director of the consumer protection bureau created by the new financial regulatory law.

Late Update: Maybe not so fast. Fox was one of the outlets originally reporting this and has now retracted that report, saying they may have “misheard” White House spokesperson Bill Burton on board Air Force One. Reuters says Burton simply confirmed that Warren is “obviously in the mix.”

Later Update: The pool report from Air Force One reads as follows:

on Warren:

no announcements but soon. no confirmation of interim appointment. essentially, nothing new

The Boy Who Cried Wolf Update: White House releases statement knocking down the reports:

Elizabeth Warren has been a stalwart voice for American consumers and families and she was the architect of the idea that became the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The President will have more to say about the agency and its mission soon.

Kicking Dead Horse Update: White House pool reporter sends supplement to pool report: “For emphasis: Burton did not say anything new about Warren.”

Famed photographer of the civil rights movement, Ernest C. Withers, who sat in on some of the most sensitive strategy meetings of the movement, was also an FBI informant.

David Frum was on the Ed Show yesterday noting how Newt Gingrich’s apparent desire to run for president in 2012 has led him to try to out-Palin Palin and thus put the pedal to the metal on the bus to Crazy ™ Town in his recent claims that President Obama is a latter-day African tribesman pursuing an “anti-colonial” agenda or even that the president is clinically insane. (Remember, only a year ago he was holding out with an endorsement of fairly liberal and now former Republican Dede Scozzafava in upstate New York. He probably still feels singed by getting out of step on that one and is trying to make up for it.)

But when I was thinking about this it occurred to me that in the old days when people talked about the ‘liberal’ Gingrich era they were referring to his early and failed attempts to run for Congress in the mid-70s as a Rockefeller type Republican with a vaguely pro-environmental stance. But compared to today, the ‘liberal’ Gingrich probably means 1995-1999.

As the Tax Cut Tussle was breaking out yesterday, I saw an email from the Sharron Angle campaign attacking Harry Reid’s position and excoriating his alleged “opposition to extending tax cuts for every American.”

But that actually isn’t true. The Dem position does give a tax break to every American. And I hope some Democrats will start pointing this out. Read More

A skeptical Jon Stewart wonders if it was really god who told Florida pastor Terry Jones not to burn the Koran. “Oh really. God’s telling you to stop? When God told you to do it originally, he hadn’t anticipated the backlash?” Watch.

Go back one year to the dawn of the Crazy ™. Charlie Crist was still a Republican. Jim Greer still had his mugshot virginity. And it still seemed weird when suddenly half the Republican party erupted in a galactic freak out over President Obama’s plan to indoctrinate America’s young with his radical socialist African ideology via a beginning of the school year address to America’s students (i.e., an address to America’s schoolchildren on doing your homework and being responsible).

One of the first to really bring the Crazy mainstream was Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer who went public accusing the president of using “taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology.”

Well, a lot has changed since then. Read More

Dems preemptively moving to compromise on tax cut politics? It appears House Democrats may be moving toward accepting half a loaf on the policy front in exchange for conceding the politics to the GOP.

The latest Q poll shows wrestling mogul Linda McMahon a mere 6 points behind Richard Blumenthal.

Republicans are expected to take out the weak and lame House Democrats on the edge of the herd, but it’s a measure of the threat to their majority that Democrats are having to fend off attacks on the herd itself. Here’s a half dozen Democratic incumbents whom you wouldn’t usually expect to be in jeopardy but who aren’t safe this time around.

The Bush-stacked U.S. Civil Rights Commission is holding its annual conference in DC today. The Democratic commissioners are essentially boycotting the event, which features conservative speakers opposed to affirmative action and supportive of racial profiling. Having once been a watchdog on civil rights, especially for African Americans, the commission is now reduced to holding a panel discussion this afternoon on whether the commission itself should continue to exist.