Remember, the official nominations period has begun for the 2013 Golden Dukes Awards! We’ve already gotten a slew of great nominations and what I guess we might call open enrollment for Golden Dukes nominations closes on Monday the 16th. So seriously, get your nominations in now. For instructions on submitting your nomination and this year’s categories, see yesterday’s announcement.
Keith Michael Novak, an intelligence analyst with the Minnesota National Guard and self-styled “militia commander” has been charged with stealing the names, Social Security numbers and clearance IDs of some 400 soldiers from Fort Bragg in order to make fake IDs for members of his militia.
The Justice Department just announced that Ryan Loskarn, the chief of staff for Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), was arrested this afternoon on child pornography charges. More here.
We’ve learned this afternoon that the child porn investigation tied to Sen. Lamar Alexander’s (R-TN) chief of staff is being run by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which so far isn’t saying much because the case is still under seal.
We’ve also put together some background about the chief of staff, Ryan Loskarn, who has been placed on leave by Alexander’s office.
Ed Kilgore on what’s really going on with the Republican ‘Civil War’.
Sen. Alexander (R-TN) just announced that his Chief of Staff’s personal residence is currently being searched as part of a child pornography investigation.
For John Boehner the Speakership has been one never-ending dignity loss as he’s been lead around by various high-dollar “Tea Party” groups who run the House in spite of him. Apparently the soul-crushing got too much for him this morning: “”You mean the groups that came out and opposed it before they ever saw it? They’re using our members and they’re using the American people for their own goals. This is ridiculous.” Watch.
It’s flying under the radar a bit, but one of the early silver linings to Obamacare is that Medicaid enrollment is going up — not just because Obamacare expanded Medicaid eligibility but because the increased buzz around the new law has prompted previously eligible people who had never signed up for Medicaid to go ahead and enroll.
That success puts the failure of Republican-controlled states to expand Medicaid in even starker relief. The best example might be South Carolina, which is seeing a dramatic jump in Medicaid enrollment even without having expanded Medicaid.
So a big focus for advocates and the Obama White House going forward is how to get those remaining states on board. It might not be as hopeless a cause as you would guess. Here are the five states most likely to reverse course and expand Medicaid in the near future.
Greenwald attacks Time magazine for picking the Pope, rather than Edward Snowden, as Person of the Year.
“For the reasons which the New Yorker’s John Cassidy, the New York Times’ Margaret Sullivan, and the Washington Post’s Andrea Peterson all stated, Snowden is clearly, by far, the person who has most influenced this year’s news events. If it were a serious magazine with minimally brave editors, then of course Snowden would have been chosen, but I never expected him to be precisely because that’s not what TIME is.”
Some great pics from aboard Air Force One en route to Nelson Mandela’s memorial service, including George W. Bush showing Hillary Clinton photos of his post-presidency paintings (above).