Former Rep. and current senate candidate Rob Simmons says he’s now tea-bagging the US Constitution.

The conventional wisdom on the Pennsylvania senate race was always that if Arlen Specter could just find a party to nominate him, he’d probably cruise to reelection. But a new poll out from Susquehanna puts that assumption in real question. He’s running about dead-even with the uber-right-wing Pat Toomey and just under a third of voters think he deserves reelection.

We took a look at those excessive travel charges Chris Christie billed the US government while he was US Attorney. And it’s not quite as clear cut as first advertised. Here’s our report. Some of the examples fit pretty clearly into the living large category. $449 per night room in Boston because no other rooms were available in town at a cheaper rate, allegedly. Christie experienced the same room shortage on a trip to DC. Other stays, though, were much less clear cut.

Alas, it seems the folks at GOP.com have now scrubbed their reference to Ronald Reagan as “Ronaldus Magnus”. (See the Late Update: in our post.)

Last night was “Fiesta Latina” music night on the South Lawn, the third installment in Michelle Obama’s White House music series. We have the pics:

I was initially outraged when I saw that four Republican members of Congress today had asked the House sergeant-at-arms to investigate whether Muslim interns on key national security committee are really infiltrators sent to spy on behalf of Islamic terrorists. But the more we looked into it, the more comically ridiculous the whole thing appears to be.

The members (including Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ), who should really know better) base their allegations on a book published by the always reliable WorldNetDaily, titled Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America. The book was based in part on having a co-author’s son pretend to be a Muslim (growing the requisite beard for effect) and infiltrate a mainstream Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American Islamic Relations. So the dastardly plot to plant Muslim interns as spies on the Hill was uncovered by an intern acting as a spy.

Justin Elliott lays out the details.

In addition to the weird and now deleted reference to Ronald Reagan as “Ronaldus Magnus”, you may have noticed that the site is filled with a lot of what might generously be called non-standard history — like the idea that the Republican party is made up mainly of people from the 19th century, about half of whom are black. Well we did a little digging and it turns out Steele turned over a lot of the job to a fringe-ish amateur historian named Michael Zak. Meet him here.

People should stop pretending Obama’s the Messiah and get back to bedrock Americanism like praising Ronaldus Magnus.

Reid, Baucus & Dodd release short statement on first day of health care bill mash-up discussions.

The Social Security Administration will announce today that there will be no cost-of-living adjustment on benefits for the first time since COLAs were adopted in 1975, due to negative inflation. That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.