Minority Leader perhaps soon to be Speaker John Boehner says we need to consider amending the 14th Amendment.

Our long-term structural unemployment crisis and the long-term decline, indeed decay, of our public infrastructure are screaming for a joint solution. Put people to work rebuilding, repairing and maintaining the public infrastructure. We’re not just talking roads, bridges and other transportation systems. It includes schools, teachers, public health, parks, and a whole array of public services we’ve intentionally neglected.

It’s not just the mutton barbecue (okay, it’s mostly the mutton barbecue) that has me envying Evan McMorris-Santoro’s assignment this weekend. The Fancy Farm Picnic is a vestige of a romanticized politics of days gone by, but those days aren’t entirely a figment of our nostalgia. If people seemed more engaged with electoral politics in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it’s because before TV, movies, and video games, election campaigns were one of the few shows in town. It was bloodsport as entertainment way before Crossfire came along. Evan reviews his day in Fancy Farm.

Kentucky’s Democrat Attorney General Jack Conway came out swinging against his U.S. Senate opponent Rand Paul at the Fancy Farm Picnic, where old-style stump speeches and mutton barbecue supplant 24-hour cable news at least for one day. Almost. Conway belittled Paul as “a waffling pessimist who wants to be the prince of cable TV.” Evan McMorris-Santoro was there.

Rand Paul, on his Dem opponent: “There are six words you won’t hear Jack Conway say: President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.”

Evan McMorris-Santoro has more on Paul’s speech at the Fancy Farm Picnic.

In Evan McMorris-Santoro’s latest dispatch from Fancy Farm, Ky., Senate candidate Jack Conway (D) calls the GOP’s 14th Amendment birthright citizenship crusade nothing but “pandering” to the conservative base.

Republicans from across the state of Kentucky were treated to a healthy portion of political red meat this morning by Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul and Eric Cantor. At a pre-Fancy Farm Picnic breakfast event, the GOP trio offered some dire warnings about all the terrible, terrible things that’ll happen if Paul’s not elected to the Senate and Cantor’s GOP doesn’t win the House.

TPM’s Evan McMorris-Santoro is in Fancy Farm, Kentucky today for the Bluegrass State’s annual political party and picnic. Mitch McConnell and Eric Cantor will be appearing at this morning’s GOP breakfast, and this afternoon Senate candidates Rand Paul and Jack Conway will be taking pot shots at each other in front of an audience encouraged to heckle loudly. Read Evan’s preview of the festivities here. And check back for updates throughout the day.

Michael Steele gave a stemwinder today at the RNC meeting in Kansas City, even donning a bright red “Fire Pelosi” baseball cap as he kicked off his own six week national bus tour.

But he got so wrapped up in the moment that he tossed off what will have to end up as one of Steele’s more memorable lines, declaring that he and his supporters were going to send Nancy Pelosi to “back of the bus.”

Before this is over we’ll have her drinking from a separate fountain!

If only everyone’s job were as secure as Michael Steele’s.

Charlie Crist (?-FL) says GOP “would have to do better” for him to caucus with the Senate Republicans.