Do you know why the official name of the Catholic Church is actually the Roman Catholic Church? Because thanks to the Emperor Constantine, it was built on the vestiges of the Roman Empire. And it is still run like an empire; an empire that punishes dissidents among its people.A couple of weeks ago I ran a post praising my neighbor Tom Suozzi for courageously announcing in a NYTimes OpEd that

Aravosis reports there was a White House conference call with members of the DNC’s gay caucus today in which one of them asked the White House Deputy Chief of staff and political director “What are we going to do about the blogs?”

I’d say the blogs are the least of their problems at this point.

Why am I getting that “true colors shining through” feeling here from strutting peacock Sen. Bob Corker:Sen. Bob Corker blew off his meeting with Sonia Sotomayor last week. Hobbling along with her leg in a cast, she was 10 minutes late and he said he didn’t feel like waiting. “I decided to proceed on to the next meeting,” he told a Tennessee Press Association breakfast in Chattanooga.

From refusing to release the White House visitors’ logs to invoking state secrets in his refusal to comply with court orders, President Barack Obama is showing a disturbing lack of transparency on a number of important issues. Though the Obama Administration has yet to approach the obsessive and obstreperous secrecy of the Bush years–Red State’s Brian Faughnan’s waffle obsession not withstanding—is this really the territory the new president wants to defend?

As BayStateLibrul pointed out in threads, SCOTUS denied the Wilsons cert today in their lawsuit against Dick Cheney and his band of leakers. As bmaz points out, the news is unsurprising.

The die was cast by John Bates’ exploitation (and to some extent contortion) of glaring and gaping holes in the pleading by Plame/Wilson.

@TehranBureau reports. . .

This may be the dumbest collection of statements by a political panel ever uttered in on the same show, with the possible exception of any single interview of Mike Pence.

I spoke recently with Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and asked him about the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, which would give the GAO the authority to audit the Fed and report its findings to Congress. He said that before the August recess “there will be a hearing on that particular bill and others,” both in Mel Watt’s Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology and Dennis Moore’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

Anyone who is the least bit familiar with the intertwined history of Iran and the United States — such as every Iranian over the age of five — knows the following: We toppled their last actual leader who was actually elected, Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, back in the 1950s because he dared to nationalize their oil industry.

The multi-millionaires like Diane Feinstein who comprise the US Senate, people whose health care is covered in platinum plans for life, are pretending that the US doesn’t have enough money to provide universal health care. This story is beyond insulting.