What is Michael Steele getting when he brings on celebrity CNN pundit Alex Castellanos as the RNC’s new acting communications director?

Rahm Emanuel ordered senior White House staffers to read Ron Brownstein’s Saturday blog post “A Milestone in the Health Care Journey,” which had caught President Obama’s eye.

I’m used to seeing Law & Order plots that come right from recent news headlines. But this may be the first time that I saw the Law & Order episode first and only later found out about the real life story. The real story is about Paul Bergrin, a former prosecutor in the New Jersey US Attorneys office who apparently went from a life of prosecuting criminals to defending them and then decided to just cut out the middle man and become one himself. He’s now been indicted on multiple counts involving drug dealing, prostitution, the murder of two witnesses and more.

Kentucky state police have ruled that Bill Sparkman, the census worker found dead with a rope around his neck and “fed” scrawled on his chest, was a suicide. Sparkman apparently made his suicide look like a murder in the hopes that his son would get a pay out from his insurance policies.

Alex Castellanos is really getting around. He’s now CNN analyst, “senior communications advisor” for the Republican party and top strategist and consult for AHIP (the insurers lobby) and the Chamber of Commerce.

Doug Hoffman, Conservative candidate who almost made it all the way into Congress from New York’s 23rd district, has now officially re-conceded the race to now-Rep. Bill Owens (D-NY).

A few minutes ago I left the office to grab a cup of coffee. And on the way out the door I spent a few moments in the Fox News alternative universe.

The topic was budget deficits and the stimulus plan; and the anchor was Stuart Varney, a one-time financial news reporter for CNN. Varney was berating some hapless guest about how the Stimulus had “failed” because the jobless rate is higher now than it was when the bill passed. And thus the money should never even have been spent. Read More

We’ve now got a pretty good view into what the final lap for health care reform in the senate is going to look like — Harry Reid’s high-wire with four moderate and conservative Democrats, Landrieu, Lieberman, Lincoln and Nelson. (The Dems clearly have a mid-alphabet problem.) But each is in the catbird seat for a different reason, each has different needs and demands with different mixes of ego, ideology, self-preservation and cantankerousness. So today, for your late afternoon reading, we’ve put together your TPM Final Four Playbook. Think of it like a program at the ballgame or a playbill at the theater, a run-down of the key data to help you understand the bickering and negotiating we’re likely to see with these four from here on out.

Given who some of the critics are, I guess this is a rhetorical question. But have those who worry that KSM & Co. are going to use their trial as a platform to make jihadist speeches and spout hateful rhetoric ever seen how federal criminal trials are actually conducted? How tightly controlled they are and how little most defendants are allowed to say much of anything at all?

I just learned that the first national Tea Party convention will be held in February and both Palin and Bachmann will be headlining. It does raise the question/possibility whether it could lead to some sort of matter/anti-matter type blow up if they come into sustained contact with the non-crazy universe.