A key Coleman witness admits on cross examination that her political sympathies lie with Coleman.

The Coleman camp is lucky this witness, as compromised as she may be, can even be heard. Earlier today, the election court stopped short of striking her testimony and instead fined Coleman’s lawyers for withholding from the Franken team evidence related to her testimony.

Over the weekend, Mark Leibovich had an interesting an entertaining piece in the Times on how “socialism” has become the Republicans’ new all-purpose smear word attacking Obama in particular and Democrats generally.

Now, you can have a whole conversation about whether ramping marginal tax rates back to where they were in the go-go 1990s really constitutes socialism. But a different point occurred to me when I read the piece. I think this is probably the best evidence there is that the ‘liberal’ label simply doesn’t have the punch that it had going back a good thirty years in American politics.

If it did, they’d still be using it, since it at least has some relationship to reality. But it doesn’t, so they’re not.

From The Politico …

In a little-noticed interview Saturday night, Steele dismissed Limbaugh as an “entertainer” whose show is “incendiary” and “ugly.”

Steele’s criticism makes him the highest-ranking Republican to pick a fight with the popular and polarizing conservative talk show host.

The Justice Department releases nine Bush-era memos penned by the Office of Legal Counsel.

I just want to give props to the Democratic psyops operation that’s paying off Michael Steele to get into a gonzo spat with Rush. Great work, guys.

Every day now I see a new article quoting this or that bank CEO saying it was a mistake to take government aid and that they’ve decided to give it back. Yesterday it was Northern Trust. Today it’s Bank of America. Yet each time I look down into the articles, the headlines about paying

the money back are never borne out in the articles themselves. Northern Trust doesn’t want to be hassled any more about lavish events. So they’re giving the money back. When? As soon as they can manage it.

Now Bank of America’s Ken Lewis says they made a “tactical mistake” in asking for and receiving more money to absorb Merrill Lynch. So when are they paying it back? Hopefully in “two to three years.”

How can you say it was a mistake when you won’t be able to pay it back for years? I think that means you need it.

It seems to me that if you’re saying it was a mistake and you’re going to give it back and then you say you’re not going to pay it back for years, I think that means it wasn’t a mistake since obviously you cannot make do without the money. What am I missing?

What it looks like to me is that a lot of these TARPers are getting headlines on the cheap saying they either didn’t want the money, don’t need it or are actually giving it back, when it turns out they plan to hold on to the money for years.

The RNC chair issues groveling apology to … Rush Limbaugh.

This is really pathetic:

“I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren’t what I was thinking,” Steele said. “It was one of those things where I thinking I was saying one thing, and it came out differently. What I was trying to say was a lot of people … want to make Rush the scapegoat, the bogeyman, and he’s not.”

I mean, I’m not sure how else to put it. This guy has to be about the worst, most embarrassing party chair we’ve seen in recent memory. It’s embarrassing enough that Steele is like, what? … the third Republican to criticize Rush and then make it less than 36 hours before being forced to undergo the 21st century Republican version of a Maoist self-criticism session. It’s sad for the Republican party that no one can criticize Rush without having to be hauled out for this sort of humiliation a day or so later. But for Steele not to have realized that or not to have been sufficiently in control of his mouth to avoid saying this just shows once again that this dude is really, really not ready for prime time.

Dems gloat after Rush awards himself sole custody of Steele’s testicles.

Just out from Gov. Tim Kaine, Steele’s counterpart at the DNC …

“I was briefly encouraged by the courageous comments made my counterpart in the Republican Party over the weekend challenging Rush Limbaugh as the leader of the Republican Party and referring to his show as ‘incendiary’ and ‘ugly.’ However, Chairman Steele’s reversal this evening and his apology to Limbaugh proves the unfortunate point that Limbaugh is the leading force behind the Republican Party, its politics and its obstruction of President Obama’s agenda in Washington. Just this weekend, Rush Limbaugh repeated his claim that he is rooting for the President to fail. The last time Rush Limbaugh said he wanted the President to fail, virtually every single Republican in Congress followed his lead and voted against the President’s plan to create or save 3.5 million jobs.

“As Congress works to pass the President’s budget, Republicans need to stop following divisive figures like Rush Limbaugh, stop apologizing to him and put aside the failed politics of the past so we can put our economy back on track, reform our health care system, break our dependence on foreign oil, improve our schools, and lay the foundation for long-term growth in the 21st Century.”