Matt Bevin, McConnell’s newly announced Tea Party challenger for next year’s Republican Senate nomination, says he’s ready to spend his own money on the campaign (of which he apparently has a lot). Meanwhile, the main Tea Party and Tea Party-leaning PACs, the ones who sometimes take out viable candidates, are saying they’re at least open to considering supporting Bevin.

The first President Bush shaves his head in solidarity with the 2 year old son of a member of his security detail who is undergoing treatment for leukemia.

As part of a federal civil rights investigation triggered by students’ complaints, one USC student claims campus police told her that she was not raped because her assailant did not ejaculate inside of her.

My favorite detail in this story about the businessman who’s now dragging down Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell is that he once tried to create less-toxic cigarettes by using tobacco that had been nuked in a microwave. The idea didn’t take off, apparently, and now it’s on the long list of failed and sometimes troubled business ideas that marked his career before he became tied to some of the biggest Republican names in Virginia politics, including McDonnell and the man the GOP hopes will succeed him, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. Read the whole thing here.

What? I already said, it’s a word cloud of Obama’s speech.

Jenn Senior looks at Weiner, marriage and narcissism. This one’s good.

I think it’s fair to say that the White House has had a hard time previewing President Obama’s forthcoming economic speech, and Republicans are gleefully trolling the whole event as a result. Ok, they’d probably be trolling it anyhow. But because the remarks aren’t tied to a big event, or new administration initiative — won’t be a to-do list for Congress, but will supposedly have some policy heft to it — they’re not easily distilled in briefings with reporters, who understandably want to break some news.

It lacks an obvious hook. But the hook is there — it’s just one the president can’t dwell on too transparently. Read More

Yesterday, Brian Beutler explained how the House GOP is on a runaway train toward a world of hurt, as a new working majority in the Senate has simply tired of the nonsense and hirewire acts from the House. Now key conservatives are preparing for a sort of ‘Sons of Saddam’ last stand over Obamacare, threatening a government shutdown if the law isn’t repealed. I guess you could say Alamo-esque, depending on your preferred cultural reference. But Sen. Roy Blunt just said he doesn’t support this latest round of hostage taking.

After a rebuke from Speaker John Boehner, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is standing behind his claim that 99% of DREAMers (undocumented young people who were brought to the US by their parents at a young age) are drug couriers or ‘mules’. “And that comes from being down on the border, spending days and nights down there in multiple trips and time with the Border Patro. It’s not something that I’m making up. This is real.”

Last week I noted that while he was Governor of Indiana, now Purdue University President Mitch Daniels went on a mini-crusade trying to remove radical historian Howard Zinn’s work from Indiana schools. Now it turns out he may have plagiarized his criticisms of Zinn.