Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) was flirting with the fringe for a little bit here today. He offered an amendment dealing with guns onto a bill that, of all things, dealt with water resources. The amendment likely would have fueled a conspiracy theory that alleges the Obama administration has been buying up all the nation’s ammo to keep it out of the hands of gun-loving regular folk. But by early this afternoon, he apparently had second thoughts and yanked the amendment.

Let me be the first to say that Republicans in Congress have perfectly good reasons for not wanting to return to “regular order” budgeting, just like Democrats had good reasons for not wanting to pass a budget the past four years and Republicans had good reason during that time to pressure Democrats to return to the “regular order” budgeting they now oppose.

But they’re not reasons anyone’s admitting to, and they’re definitely not evidence one party has a greater commitment to the rules and norms of budgeting than the other. It really all comes down to the fact that Republicans can’t negotiate budget policy without the threat of a debt default looming over the whole process.

They’re not even doing a great job of hiding it. Read More

One of the co-authors of that Heritage Foundation immigration study argued that Hispanics had genetically based intellectual deficits which made it impossible for them ever to match the IQ of whites and that low IQs should be the basis for barring potential immigrants.

We don’t know enough to assign blame on who should have known or done more to rescue those three women held captive in Ariel Castro’s house in Cleveland. We don’t know if anyone, the cops or neighbors, could have done anything more. But this article captures one thread of the story – the neighborhood in question is one just starting to get cleaned up from widespread prostitution and drug dealing. Poking your head around or asking questions about odd or shady-seeming behavior wasn’t necessarily a good idea. And a decent number of homes were all or half boarded up. Here’s the piece.

This comes from the department of dodged bullets or missed opportunities, depending on your predilections. But independent of your point of view it’s a pointed reminder of the deceptiveness of the Romney campaign. Read More

Anderson Cooper interviews Charles Ramsey, the guy who helped free those three women from that house in Cleveland. After the jump … Read More

Three year old fatally shoots himself with uncle’s unsecured gun.

PolitiFact comes up with another doozy of a “fact check” and Rachel Maddow lets it rip. Watch.

There have been several stories today claiming that neighbors called police about strange behavior at Ariel Castro’s home on two or three occasions — naked women on all fours in the backyard, people banging on windows in the house, etc. But Cleveland police are saying that’s not so. They say that only two calls were logged to that home — one from Castro himself and another about Castro but in reference to his work as a school bus driver. Full statement after the jump. Read More

Now Charles Ramsey’s 911 call has been released. After the jump … Read More