Yesterday presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said the Ryan Medicare Phase Out plan was “radical change from the right” that America wasn’t ready for. Not exactly a good way to start the week when House Republicans want to relaunch their plan to phase out Medicare. Now the big walk back begins.

It’s amazing the kind of Russian Roulette some people are willing to play with the nation’s future. The US hit its debt limit Monday morning. As of right now the US can’t borrow money to meet its current obligations. So the Treasury must now start devising bailing wire and bubble gum techniques to keep the country out of default.

Capitol Hill Republicans say they’re in no rush to raise the debt ceiling to keep the United States from its first default in US history.

Fresh off Newt Gingrich calling Paul Ryan Medicare Phase Out Plan “right wing social engineering”, Ryan has struck back at Newt: “With allies like that, who needs the left?”

In a sense it’s less Ryan that Newt has hurt as a lot of freshman Republicans sitting in swing districts in the midwest. It’s a great pivot for thousands of Democratic ads: Congressman X voted for the plan that even Newt Gingrich called radical right wing social engineering.

Newt of course is already trying to walk it back.

In a parking lot or sidewalk this morning Newt Gingrich ditched his support for mandates after endorsing them … yesterday.

Donald Trump announces he’s bagging on running for president, apparently conceding that his butt really hurts when it gets kicked this hard.

Is it an accident that both Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have come out of the gate stumbling over whether there’s a place for individual mandates in reforming America’s dysfunctional health care system? Read More

An amazing photo from shuttle Endeavor’s final launch this morning.

Full slide show here.

In his speech today relaunching his plan to privatize/phase out Medicare, Rep. Paul Ryan said that his plan for phasing out Medicare will strengthen “welfare for those who need it.”

FEC official to NYT: “I hate it when people lie to us. If somebody submits a sworn affidavit, we usually do not go back and question it, unless we have something else to go on. Maybe we should not be so trusting.”

This year’s big spending cut bill that prevented a government shutdown by slashing the federal budget and allowing Republicans to make good on their campaign promises actually — wait for it — increased federal spending by $3 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

You read that right. Had the federal budget for the remainder of 2011 remained untouched, the government would have spent $3 billion less through September than it will now spend under the Republican-driven course “correction.”