It’s been too long since the last government shutdown fiasco, so let’s do it again.

Colbert: Pawlenty’s big endorsement gives Mitt exactly one additional vote. Watch.

Is John Boehner really opting for another government shutdown standoff? It’s looking like the Speaker may be prepping to renege on the earlier budget deal.

Feinstein, Petraeus say it’s time for war-time contractors to go.

Rick Perry on cheers for the death of a (hypothetical) 30 year old man without insurance: “I was a bit taken aback by that myself.”

From Dean Debnam, President of PPP polling: “In just three weeks Barack Obama has nearly doubled his lead over Rick Perry. That would seem to be an indication that Perry’s comments about Social Security are giving him trouble with swing voters.”

Driving the attack on Perry, Rep. Bachmann now claims that Gardasil, the HPV vaccine which has the secondary effect of preventing most cervical cancer, actually makes young girls retarded. “I will tell you that I had a mother last night come up to me here in Tampa, Florida, after the debate,” Bachmann said. “She told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter.”

Needless to say, there is no evidence whatsoever that this is true.

Elizabeth Warren will officially announce her candidacy tomorrow morning in Massachusetts.

One of the funny things about covering Michele Bachmann’s presidential bid is that for most observers she’s a pretty recent entry on to the national stage. Here at TPM though we’ve been following her pretty closely back as far as 2008, actually even further back. So picking up a random conspiracy theory that Gardasil causes ‘sudden retardation‘ in young girls just isn’t that surprising. As just one example of numerous examples — but also on health care — here’s Bachmann from early 2010 claiming that people who criticize ‘government health care’ can have their health care ‘revoked’.

Pennsylvania Republicans are planning to change the state’s way of apportioning electoral college votes, getting rid of winner take all. Since Dems usually win Pennsylvania that would have the effect of neutralizing the state in the Electoral College. And it could have a big effect on the outcome of next year’s election.