A top House Republican, Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA), is departing from GOP orthodoxy by not only saying his home state of Louisiana should do Medicaid expansion but also implement its own Obamacare insurance exchange.

Okay, last we checked in TPM Reader CO told us that alpine rescue gear from Bulletproof Securities might just be a snow groomer from a ski slope painted with camo. But TPM Reader M gives us the full story …. Read More

Last night I wrote about the amazing story of the paramilitaries from Bulletproof Securities in Scottsdale, Arizona and how they’ve scarred the crap out of the good people of northern Wisconsin. Now, after looking at Bulletproof Securities and their purported private army run out of a real estate office I was sort of suspicious if they have quite the firepower or quite the range of clients they claim to. Read More

It wouldn’t mean that much if you’re average pol had someone working for him who has a white supremacist/pro-confederate/white rights past. Maybe they’ve changed or maybe the pol didn’t know. But when it’s Rand Paul, given that his dad has basically always been surrounded by these types of people, it’s a bit different.

Russian official says Edward Snowden has accepted Venezuela’s offer of political asylum.

Late Update: Not so fast … maybe. The Russian official has since deleted his tweet. The AP says there is “confusion.”

Here’s a fascinating little story. There’s been a battle royale up in Wisconsin over an effort to establish a big iron mining operation near Lake Superior, to be owned and operated by a company called Gogebic Taconite. The Republican legislature approved the mine in March over environmentalists’ objections. Some protests have been staged since the operation got started. But people started to get freaked out over the weekend when the company brought in what the Wisconsin State Journal calls “masked security guards who are toting semi-automatic rifles and wearing camouflaged uniforms.” Read More

Like many of you I’ve been using Twitter, among other sources, to follow and try to make sense of the on-going situation in Egypt. And yesterday I saw a tweet from a very knowledgable observer of Egyptian politics and culture (an Egyptian national living in Egypt, to be clear) write something that, quite simply, showed a really weak grasp of US politics. It made me realize once again how difficult it is for the vast majority of us to make sense at any deep level of what’s happening in a country like Egypt. And by ‘we’ in this case I think means me and virtually everyone else stateside who hasn’t either spent a good deal of time in Egypt or studied the country or at least the Arab Middle East in some depth. Read More

With the original IRS ‘scandal’ crumbling on every front, GOP Rep. Mike Kelly (PA) tries to revive it by pointing out that he got audited.

Great piece. Now that the House GOP has decided to kill immigration reform, they have to come up with an excuse why they did it to avoid all the blame.

If Jupiter was as close to Earth as the moon, what would it look like in the evening sky? Take a look.