The U.S. Attorney’s office in New Orleans dismisses Andrew Breitbart’s unsubstantiated allegations (made this afternoon on Fox News) that some big Justice Department-ACORN conspiracy is out to get the bozos who were arrested for trying to tamper with Sen. Landrieu’s phones.
Robert Gates fires the head of the beleaguered F-35 joint strike fighter program.
Noah Shachtman has more of the details.
A strange moment Saturday at a forum for the Democratic Senate candidates in Pennsylvania. It was one of those (lame) forums where the candidates aren’t on stage simultaneously, but appear consecutively. Or at least that’s how it was supposed to work — except Sen. Arlen Specter bumbled out during the end of Rep. Joe Sestak’s remarks and had to be asked to leave the stage by the moderator. Watch.
A new Rasmussen poll gives insurgent GOPer Marco Rubio a 12-point lead over Florida Gov. Charlie Crist in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate.
SNL does Scott Brown: “I’m about to fili-bust out of these jean shorts.” Watch.
White House officials hadn’t planned for President Obama’s Friday Q&A with congressional Republicans to be a huge political hit, but for the first time in weeks, they got a pleasant surprise.
Like all websites we follow our site’s traffic statistics very closely. And one subsection of those ‘analytics’ that are interesting beyond just TPMers are the trends in browser usage. So I thought I’d share the numbers from January, which show how fluid the trends in browser usage continue to be. Read More
Rather than pop the cork on the long-awaited Office of Professional Responsibility report on how the Justice Department came to legalize torture during its darkest days under George W. Bush, the department trying to let some of the fizz out slowly with well-placed leaks.
Over the weekend, Newsweek and the Washington Post reported that the final OPR report, whose release is imminent, will soften the conclusions of an earlier draft report. The final report will find that then-DOJ lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo exercised “poor judgment” but did not violate the standards of professional conduct.
President Obama unveils a $3.83 trillion federal budget today, with a projected deficit of $1.56 trillion. That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
Meg Whitman dumps and disavows supporter after video surfaces of him declaring himself “a proud racist.”
Video after the jump. Read More