From Michael Steele …

“As oil continues to spill in the Gulf and unemployment hovers at ten percent, the President can no longer take his eye off the “Oil”. 

“While it is fitting and appropriate to look at the yachting activities of the BP CEO, with incredulity, it is equally incredible that President Obama finds himself on yet another golf course as oil continues to spew into the Gulf. Until this problem is fixed, no more golf outings, no more baseball games, no more Beatle concerts, Mr. President. The stakes are too high for President Obama’s lackadaisical approach to both his responsibilities and the challenges we face.”
 

This front page article in Politico about Tea Party efforts to recall various Democratic senators — most prominently, NJ’s Sen. Menendez — takes surprisingly little note of the fact that recalling a federal senator is clearly unconstitutional.

Under the headline “Not Everyone Agrees” (i.e., not everyone agrees recalls are allowable), you can read a few Democratic consultants saying it can’t happen. Other than that though it’s your classic, ‘Earth round or flat? Let’s hear both sides.”

Congressional Democrats aren’t done with Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX). They’re launching a campaign to press individual reps in swing districts to demand his ouster as top Republican on the Energy Committee.

You’ve probably heard people arguing that the US should detonate a nuclear warhead adjacent to the drill hole in the Gulf (presumably BP doesn’t have it’s own arsenal?) to permanently seal the leak. And while I think it’s probably still just a really bad idea to start using nuclear warheads on the sea floor to stop oil leaks, the engineering and physics behind the idea actually aren’t as crazy as you might think.

But this weekend Rep. Phil Gingrey (R) of Georgia gave a good example of why it’s good to have engineers running the relief efforts and not congressmen. Said Gingrey: “For the life of me, I can’t understand why BP couldn’t go into the ocean floor, maybe 10 feet lateral to the – around the periphery – drill a few holes and put a little ammonium nitrate, some dynamite, in those holes and detonate that dynamite and seal that leak. And seal it permanently.”

He seems to be approaching the task with a Faisal Shahzad level of technical sophistication.

You know it’s getting pretty bad for Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) when she goes on Fox to talk about the BP Escrow Fund and even O’Reilly is starting calling BS on her. Watch.

We have another poll showing Charlie Crist in a solid lead over both Democrat Kendrick Meek and Republican Marco Rubio. This one is sponsored by the Florida Chamber of Commerce and done by a GOP polling firm. And it shows Crist up by 11 over Rubio and by 28 over Meek. Read More

Mike Huckabee notes the “ick factor” as one reason to oppose gay marriage.

A number of you have written in about that article in the UK Telegraph saying Rahm will resign some time later this year. First, I have no idea if or when Rahm is going to resign. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if he did. But. But, and it’s a big ‘but’, if I had a nickel for every big scoop on American politics published by one of the big UK dailies that turned out to be nonsense and based on nothing, well … I’d be a rich man. And that takes a lot of nickels.

The record is so bad as to almost suggest this might be evidence that Rahm has pledged to stay until Obama leaves office.

Blackwater, now rebranded as Xe, just got a $120 million contract to protect US consulates in Afghanistan.

Former Rep. JD Hayworth is making a pretty strong run against Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) as a True Conservative, Tea Partying stop-all-the-government-spending insurgent. But it turns out that right after he got bounced from Congress back in 2006 he signed on as a celebrity endorser for one of those late-night You Too Can Get Free Money from the Government informercials.

Must see. Take a look.