New numbers from the Congressional Research Service show civilian and Iraqi police deaths way down over the last 18 months, but Iraq remains a remarkably violent place.

Let’s start by stipulating that conventional and even very low tech explosives like those used in Madrid and London are plenty dangerous enough. Even the 9/11 attacks, in a sense, we’re driven by the jet fuel in the freshly fueled planes. But the WMD terror charges brought this morning against Najibullah Zazi remind us that federal law has an incredibly expansive definition ‘WMD’. Read More

Rahm: Public option will not make it through the Senate.

The married FBI agent who was forced to resign after his supervisors found a list of his sexual conquests — which included a confidential informant in the Bill Jefferson case and other FBI agents — had drawn up the list at the urging of his therapist. No word yet on how it ended up in his supervisors’ hands.

The Massachusetts GOP has gone to court to try to block the appointment of Paul Kirk to the U.S. Senate.

According to a poll, New Yorkers don’t want President Obama telling Gov. Paterson not to run for governor. They want to tell him not to run themselves.

Here’s our update on that hanging of a Census worker down in Kentucky with “fed” allegedly scrawled on his chest.

Yesterday Rep. Steve King (R) of Iowa was revealing that the movement to legalize same sex marriage was a stalking horse designed to usher socialism into the United States. Today he went to the well of the House of representatives to deliver a lengthy speech claiming President Obama is the chief organizer and leader of ACORN.

He even debuted a new custom work of Socialist Realist art to dramatize the point.

Late Update: Or not so custom. It turns out it was a cover from the National Review from a few months ago.

Karl Rove warns that Dems are coming for your beer.

State police now say that Bill Sparkman, the Census worker found dead of an apparent hanging in Kentucky, maybe wasn’t hanged at all. His body was apparently in contact with ground when it was found.

Separately, a retired state trooper who knew Sparkman tells TPMmuckraker that’d he’d warned Sparkman about doing his Census work in isolated parts of rural Kentucky, but not necessarily because of anti-government extremism.

Said Gilbert Acciardo: “I said, you’re going into rural Kentucky, isolated areas. Be careful over there — people may not understand that you’re there to gather statistics.”