Lautenberg issues a curt “back off, we’ll get to that next year” to Cory Booker.

We’ve consulted the Senate parliamentarian and this translate from Senate to English as: “I’m too busy being Senator right now to talk about this, hot dog.”

Conservative judge who sentenced Jared Loughner makes pleas for gun control.

Josh is answering your questions on TPMPrime today at 4pm eastern. Get your questions in right now.

If I was still living in New Jersey, I’m not sure I’d support Cory Booker bum-rushing Frank Lautenberg out of the Senate.

Curious: would you?

I’m thinking the campaign platform might be: Dude, how you long do you expect me to be Mayor of Newark?

As of 9 a.m. ET today, FreedomWorks supported Speaker Boehner’s Plan B. But by 1:30 this afternoon, it was pulling the plug on its own support: “After review of the Boehner Plan B legislation, pending in the House today, FreedomWorks has found it must oppose the legislation, and will be urging House members to vote NO on the bill.”

Speaker Boehner, a short time ago: “I’m convinced the president is unwilling to stand up to his own party.”

Cory Booker is skipping quickly past the “exploratory” phase of his Senate campaign, judging by comments to TPM by one of his senior advisers.

TPM’s Eric Lach took a deep look at the history of the semi-automatic rifle used in last week’s Connecticut elementary school massacre.

Alec MacGillis at The New Republic had a stroke of genius when he decided to pull the last quarterly SEC filing for The Freedom Group. That’s the consolidated group of gun manufacturers aggregated together and now owned by Cerberus Capital Management, of the country’s biggest and most successful private equity firms. How do they look at their own financial prospects, going into the future? Read More

Brian Beutler’s got a great piece about how John Boehner’s ‘Plan B’ just seemed to totally blow up the fiscal cliff negotiations. There are so many different angles to go with this — one is, how is this good for Boehner or the GOP? He throws down the gauntlet and tells Obama: ‘I’m going to get my caucus to vote for a tax increase that will never actually become law and bogart all the blame for going over the fiscal cliff?’ Really? Read More