Rep. Paul Ryan, Chief House Republican budget writer, is digging in on his proposed plan to abolish Medicare and make deep cuts to Social Security.

Harry Shearer: “With Mitch Landrieu winning Mayor and Saints winning Super Bowl, symbolism plain: NO has now ended the post-Katrina era.”

Chicago crew sinking the Obama presidency? Steve Clemons makes the argument.

Scott Lee Cohen has dropped out of the race for Lt. Governor of Illinois.

Relive some great moments from Scott Lee Cohen’s week as nominee.

If Gov. Paterson has to resign maybe we just put Spitzer back in and pretend the whole thing never happened?

Details are sketchy. But there was apparently a very large explosion at the Kleen Energy plant in Middletown, Connecticut around 11:30 AM this morning. Local news says at least 250 people were injured, with two now confirmed dead.

This is pretty classic. A week ago GOP Rep. Jeb Hensarling (TX) was telling Chris Matthews about the glories of the House Republicans’ draft 2010 budget, filled with plans to cut and privatize Social Security and abolish Medicare. But as news began to spread this week about the draft plan prepared by chief House Republican budgeteer Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the Republican leadership, especially Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) started acting like they barely knew anything about it.

That brings us up to today, when Republicans sent Rep. Hensarling to give the response to the president’s Saturday radio address. So what he say about the draft Ryan plan?

Not much. Hensarling for some reason used the whole time to talk about House Republicans’ 2009 budget. In other words, an outline plan from last year about the year that already happened and was actually panned at the time for not including any details and even including a lot of fake charts.

So what’s the deal? The House GOP is getting behind a budget which calls for partial abolition of Social Security and full abolition of Medicare. And they’re on the air talking about last year’s budget? Maybe Obama should talk about the Clinton surpluses? What’s the big need to hide what they’re actually proposing for next year?

Back on Tuesday, Reuters’ reporter Terri Cullen published a story entitled “Backdoor taxes to hit middle class,” which alleged a series of stealth middle classes tax increases proposed by the Obama White House.

The White House complained that the story contained numerous false claims. Reuters pulled the story after conceding it contained “significant errors of fact” and said a new corrected story would be forthcoming. Then they apparently concluded that the errors were so thoroughgoing that no corrected story would be published.

Now comes word from former Editor & Publisher editor Greg Mitchell that Cullen is now no longer working at Reuters, though the circumstances of her departure remain unclear.

Landrieu phone-tampering defendant Joseph Basel spotted at national Tea Party Convention in Nashville.

The red bars are the accelerating rate of job loss during President Bush’s last year in office; the blue bars are the decelerating rate of job loss during President Obama’s first year of office.

The chart was put together by the House Democratic leadership. Click the graph to see the full image.