Saying that the administration wanted to be guided by “fact-based considerations,” they “can’t be certain the number is right.”

The clock is ticking for Norm. Even as Governor Pawlenty is grudgingly recognizing that both the Minnesota Supreme Court and the Secretary of State’s office are going to interpret State law as allowing an election certificate to be issued once the state courts are done with any and all contests (which means that taking the case to the Federal level won’t stop the cert from being signed), the specter of Nasser Kazeminy has reappeared.

(Please welcome my friend Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight and Pain Killer, in the comments — jh)

We don’t generally do fiction here on the FDL Book Salon, but somehow it seems appropriate that we should break the rules with Jerry because, well….my history with Jerry is all about rule breaking.

The exit strategy: Afghan security forces. . . . What?

Judge Hellerstein, after reviewing some contents from the CIA’s torture tape library, has taken the next step in forcing CIA to turn over some of that information to the ACLU.

Yesterday we saw how both Inside-the-Beltway political establishments are going broke. Donations are down–way down, possibly because Americans are wising up to the correlation between big money politics and the kinds of special interests-driven policies that have led the country’s economy right off a cliff. At the same time, many of us have watched with great pride as some of the Blue America-endorsed candidates from 2006 and 2008 have gone on to distinguish themselves in Congress, fighting daily for the aspirations of America’s working families.

It’s funny — outside of Penn Station I saw a guy a guy huffing glue out of a paper bag and he was making more sense than Michele Bachmann was making.

Record home foreclosures in Atlanta for two months running are part of it, but so was massive exposure to home building industry problems. And never underestimate good old “waste, fraud, and abuse.” But it’s not like anyone could have seen this coming, except for those who did.

Christy’s had a shot at this already, but dang it, this is frickin’ hilarious. When President Obama challenged the Republicans to come up with a budget, this is what happened: GOP House Whip Eric Cantor and buddy Paul Ryan objected to an alternative budget ‘blueprint’ released Thursday — but were told by House GOP Leader John Boehner that they needed to back the plan — which is cribbed from a 1998 South Park episode.

Where does our food really come from — where is the stuff we are stuffing in our mouths truly originating? And how is it produced?

Don’t you wonder sometimes how safe any of it is? I know I do.