It’s increasingly clear that the real negotiations on budget cutting are going to happen with the self-styled “gang of six” in the senate, the efforts of which have implicitly gotten the blessings of the White House. Three Dems and three Republicans. But only one of the three Dems can by any definition be called a progressive. That’s Dick Durbin. The other two are Sens. Conrad and Warner. So just how committed is he to protecting Social Security? Brian Beutler looks at all the evidence.

It’s not a riddle or a Zen Koan. Like who lobbies for the interests and issues of the lobbyists themselves and what does he do? Meet Howard Marlowe, head of the League of American Lobbyists.

Dearborn, Michigan Mayor Jack O’Reilly tells Quran-burning freak Pastor Terry Jones: No, Dearborn is not under Sharia Law and we’ve got the strip clubs, bars and pork sausage factories to prove it.

Jones’ band of freaks plan to protest the purported imposition of Sharia Law in Dearborn tomorrow in front of Dearborn’s Islamic Center of America.

Jones says he’s coming in peace, albeit armed with a handgun.

As many of you have noticed, comments are still unavailable for many readers as of this morning. As you may have heard there’s been a major and on-going outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) going back to yesterday morning. In addition to the Amazon where you buy stuff, they have a major secondary business selling (“cloud-based) web hosting services. And their outage has either brought down or seriously disable sites across the web.

Luckily for us we only make pretty limited use of AWS. But the effect it’s had on us is that login and comments are still down for many of you trying to access the site. We’re working on getting them back up as soon as possible.

How bad are the current federal deficits and debt by historical standards? Not as bad as you might think.

I’m not sure I’ve heard a story in a while that captures so much about the gonzo, Obama-era far-right. Notorious Koran-burning freak Pastor Terry Jones is up in Dearborn today protesting the purported (i.e., non-existent) imposition of Sharia Law in the city. And he made a big to-do about bringing a pistol to the protest.

And now, alas, there’s been a fatality: the floorboard of Jones’ car.

Jones is apparently so handy with a firearm that he managed to accidentally discharge his weapon in his car.

Could Ensign’s resignation have Sharron Angle heading straight to the House of Representatives? Without passing go?

If you remember Doug Kmiec from the Clinton impeachment days — a pro-impeachment conservative legal scholar who was on TV constantly — then you might have wondered how his latest gig as President Obama’s ambassador to Malta under Hillary Clinton could possibly end well. It hasn’t — but for what appears to be a variety of reasons. Kmiec talks to TPM in his first interview since Obama accepted his resignation.

Republicans just voted to end Medicare — so why no response in the townhall meetings members of Congress are holding in their districts this week?

Separately from the article I linked to, I’m very, very interested to hear your reports from townhall meetings in your district and how the Medicare issue is playing in your district. Write me directly. Send an email to the comments address at the upper right hand of the site and use the subject heading: “Attn Josh: Medicare Issue.”

CJR Online has followed up with an analysis of Politifact’s epic Medicare fail using all the he said/she said false equivalence and special pleading of the original. As I said in the first case, knowing how Medicare works, its history and how its replacement would work is really key to be being able to do this kind of analysis. And the establishment, disinterested mode of deprecating definitive statements and trying to split every difference is really a liability in these cases, not an advantage.

Now, the CJR piece makes a number of arguments, not just the one I’m going to excerpt. But it does give you a taste of the style of reasoning … Read More