The UK election turned out to be perhaps the only election I can think of where all three parties managed to lose at the same time. Each in a different way.

Republicans: The capture of the Times Square bomber was just dumb luck. That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Eric Kleefeld takes a close look at retiring Rep. David Obey’s Wisconsin district and Democratic prospects for holding on to his seat.

Local TV in Las Vegas reported that a steady stream of local political types were seen entering and leaving a hotel in the city yesterday where Senate Ethics Committee investigators are interviewing witnesses in its probe of Sen. John Ensign’s cuckolding of his former top aide — and then allegedly trying to find the poor bastard work and business opportunities.

Jon Stewart asks a genuinely worrisome question: what happens when the terrorists start sending in their A-Team, as opposed to the goofs who’ve tried the last couple operations?

A year ago, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor launched a conservative ideas factory to tackle the country’s big problems, a move that at the time was hailed as a huge development toward Republicans becoming relevant again. Good news: all the country’s problems must have been solved because Cantor’s group is now defunct.

For reasons that have always struck me as paradoxical, one place where Republicans totally excel Democrats is in their ability to survive sex scandals. Admittedly, Bill Clinton managed to get that ball pretty far down the field for the Democrats in the 1990s. God bless’em.

But since then you’ve got Larry Craig, David Vitter, John Ensign, Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons — who had so many affairs that he eventually decided to just get divorced and go legit. (Who am I forgetting?) In fact, in Gibbons’ case, even the fairly credible allegations that he attempted to rape a woman in a parking garage in 2006 hasn’t seemed to seriously break his stride. Read More

In the post below I rattled off a brief list of GOP politicians who’ve been engulfed in huge sex scandals and somehow managed to stay in office and even, in some cases, run again. Somehow — as a lot of you have now pointed out to me — I managed to leave out the guy who may be the archetypal recent example: Gov. Mark Sanford (R) of South Carolina.

Think about it. Without Mark Sanford ‘hiking the Appalachian trail’ would be devoid of any sexual subtext. It would be like living in another world.

Not sure what I was thinking.

Who’s is doing better in the court of public opinion? Toyota or BP? See the chart.

We brought you the story of those homespun constitutionalists who tried to effect a citizens’ arrest of a Grand Jury Foreman down in Tennessee because he wouldn’t convene a grand jury to indict President Obama for treason. Now it turns out that the leader of the movement — the self-styled American Grand Jury movement — has received a visit from the FBI.

Zack Roth speaks to AGJ leader Carl Swensson.