U.S. Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) is decrying the vitriol he’s been greeted with for introducing a bill to require presidential candidates to submit birth certificates to the federal government (part of the whole fringe Birther movement that thinks Obama isn’t a natural born U.S. citizen): “Just a bunch of name-calling and personal denigration … There is no reason to say that I’m the illegitimate grandson of an alligator.”

Late Update: I feel so lame for not knowing the whole backstory here. I didn’t realize until a few devoted readers pointed it out that the “illegitimate son of an alligator” charge came from none other than Mr. Stephen Colbert:

(ed.note: This post originally incorrectly referred to Posey as a state rep. Alas, he is a congressman.)

The scourge of Somalian pirates has finally hit the front page this week with the attack on a U.S. flagged and crewed ship. But these types of attacks have been going on for months in the Gulf of Aden and nearby waters. Check out the slideshow we’ve put together documenting the last year’s worth of piracy.

You can lead a reporter to water, but you can’t make him call it a spending increase.

Who are the prosecutors that bungled the Ted Stevens prosecution — and how could they have screwed it up so badly? Zack Roth takes a look.

This week at book club, we’ve been discussing Jessica Valenti’s latest, The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession With Virginity Is Hurting Young Women.

Wanna know where the Purity Myth lives? Valenti suggests: Start With TPM Readers…

Join the discussion here.

Why is Obama following Bush’s lead on state secrets?

The CIA says it is shutting down its system of secret prisons where torture was carried out, but Director Leon Panetta said that CIA officers who participated in Bush-era abuses “should not be investigated, let alone punished.”

I guess that means Mark Swanner is off the hook.

We’ve been hitting repeatedly this week on the flawed meta-narrative that Republicans immediately deployed — and that some in the media lapped right up — to counter Bob Gates’ new budget proposal for the Pentagon. But there’s a lot going on here beyond the canard that Obama is “gutting” defense spending when in fact he’s proposing an overall increase in the Pentagon’s budget (a fact, by the way, that makes it easier to debunk the meme, but which really shouldn’t be dispositive either way — would a four percent decrease in spending be “gutting” the military?).

As I’ve said, this is just the most recent iteration of a 20-year debate over what the military should look like after the collapse of the Soviet Union, or to use a more apt analogy, the latest battle in a long war. Proponents of new, coherent defense spending priorities have won a few skirmishes here and there, but by and large, the entrenched defense contractor interests have prevailed in every major battle.

It’s been a messy war, in which it has not always been easy to distinguish the good guys from the bad. Donald Rumsfeld, for instance, as flawed as he was, was a leading advocate of “transforming” the military. (In fact, some have argued that Rumsfeld would not have lasted much longer as secretary of defense, so poorly were his efforts at transformation being received in the Pentagon, had the 9/11 attacks not intervened.) The fighting has rarely broken down cleanly along party lines, either, except in the broadest sense. Democrats with defense industries in their districts have historically been among the most tenacious opponents of reform, even as Republicans lob charges that Democrats are soft on defense.

All of which is to say that there is a lot of history here and a lot of nuance, most of which will be lost in the debate that’s already started. There’s also no one right way to restructure the military, and serious disagreements exist even among those who agree that major restructuring is necessary. (And, in fact, there’s substantial disagreement over whether the Gates plan equals real reform.) We’ll be trying to sort the noise from the substance as this debate proceeds.

So here’s some substance. Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA), a former rear admiral, was on MSNBC this morning, and he gave a broad summary of the Gates proposal, which he supports. If you haven’t been following events this week closely, this is a good primer:

Brian Beutler has more on Sestak, and the important role he may play in this debate, at TPMDC.