Scary Job Chart ™ gets even scarier.

TPM Reader AH asks why Democrats aren’t calling Republicans out for trying to stall the recovery to leverage the November election … Read More

Fix America? No, fix the politicians. (Maybe literally)

Jon Stewart cuts to the chase about Sen. Sessions questioning of Elena Kagan. Watch it.

From Justin Elliott’s interview this morning with embattled pollster Del Ali: “I consider myself a political scientist. If you want to call me a statistical wiz, I am not.”

I’m not sure which is better: that our reporter just got sent this Michael Steele statement from six months ago saying that Afghanistan is the must-win war for freedom or that our reporter got the tip from a Republican source.

Bill Kristol calls for Steele to resign over Afghanistan comments.

I hear Steele’s latest goof has at least one Republican senator seriously considering calling on him to resign.

We were chatting here at TPM HQ about whether or not we expect Steele to survive this latest gaffe/scandal. My sense — and it seemed to be most everyone else’s too — is that it takes more than this to pry Michael Steele out of the RNC. I mean, the guy’s like a barnacle. I can’t even begin to remember all the career-ending goofs and scandals this guy has laughed off. I see Steele walking up to this scandal, slapping it two or three times across the face and then walking away with a look of bemused disgust. Maybe brushing off his shoulder.

But there’s one thing that’s possibly different.

Most of the folks who are or are about to be calling for Steele to resign are just being opportunistic. They’ve wanted him to resign forever, many of them have called on him to resign and with this goof he’s just given them another bite at the apple. But I think this is the first time Steele has really gotten crosswise with the neocons and various Central Asia/Mideast militarists. And that can be a different thing. Maybe I’m forgetting some but I don’t think Bill Kristol really cared one way or another about Michael Steele until now. It’s just not his thing. But I figure he’s genuinely on fire about it now. Because this is a really big deal to those guys.

I wonder if that changes the equation at all.

Michael Steele may talk like he’s completely nuts sometimes. But he is responsible for the most popular TPM Slideshow in history. And that ain’t nuthin’.

I just finished reading a book on post-Roman Europe. And as someone who was taught more modern history, it was fascinating to see how much archeology of the last hundred years or so has transformed our historical understanding of the period (roughly 300 to 800 AD). But here’s an example of scientific examination generating new ‘facts’ for historians to understand and interpret — but from the much more recent past. The Library of Congress has just released the results of a study of the first draft of the Declaration of Independence which shows that Jefferson first used the monarchical “subjects” to refer to the American people before erasing it and replacing it with the republican “citizens”, which he used throughout.

Experts at the Library used hyperspectral imaging to find images of the revisions in the document.