Al Franken’s numbers looking good for reelection in Minnesota next year.
A shooting has been reported at Lone Star College’s North Harris campus in Houston, Texas.
If you have a few moments today, definitely read this piece on The Citadel by TPM reporter Eric Lach. It’s the story of a planned survivalist, gun, ‘redoubt’ community out in Idaho. So on one level it’s garden variety Crazy, a whole community based around gun-ownership, frequent militia training and built in such a way to have various defensible structures (turrets, defensible walls) for like whenever the Black Helicopters or Obamacare bureaucrats of FEMA concentration camp folks show up. But at the same time, it’s got all these trappings of a planned community, for people who think like you do, who want to participate in civic and community events — plays, sporting events and all the rest. So a lot of what many people yearn for and some people actually go and find communities to do in — only in this case they want to stockpile guns, ban liberals and ‘marxists’, build up the turrets and defensive walls and militia drill nonstop for when the tyrants show up. Sort of like a lock-n-load, take it from my cold dead hands ashram. Read.
To paraphrase so many people, when you say you’re not comparing President Obama to Hilter, that’s probably because you just compared President Obama to Hitler.
Republicans concede that Obama’s right and they’re wrong and things will be different this term.
Between the inauguration and the holiday, you may have missed what went down in the Virginia statehouse yesterday.
Obama shocks DC mandarins by announcing he’ll caucus as a Democrat.
I’ve seen a number of mentions that Mitt Romney is the first losing presidential nominee not to attend the inauguration in 24 years. But that’s not really fair. By my count, he’s the first losing nominee since Michael Dukakis (24 years ago) who didn’t have a current elected position in DC when he was running. Bush (92), Dole (96), Gore (00), Kerry (04), McCain (08). In other words, the other guys basically had to be there, as presidents, vice presidents or senior members of the Senate.
Late Update: Charlie Savage notes that Dole had actually resigned from the Senate in the middle of the 96 campaign. So that slightly breaks the model. But it’s Dole who’d been there forever and lived at the Watergate. And constitution may actually say he’s still in the Senate despite resigning. In any case, same basic logic applies I think.
A fun, little vignette about the photo shoot for Obama’s first official portrait.