There’s a new problem that just cropped up for the ethically-challenged Blue Dog, Rep. Mike Ross, on the heels of news reports about his possibly illegal pharmacy sale to a major pharmacy chain with a major stake in health insurance reform. It seems that CREW, an ethics watchdog group, has just filed a complaint with the Justice Department.

Curses, beltway wisdom wrong again.

Bad Company – Bad Company.

What’s on your mind?

While heaps of you have probably already seen the really funny Funny or Die Hollywood Supports the Insurance Industry video and Obama accepting a heart shaped potato form an audience member on Letterman–what a POTUS of the people!–the high point of comedy so far this week: Tom DeLay making his terpsichorean debut on Dancing with the Stars.

During rehearsals Twinkle Toes Tommy admitted he’s

Gotta get prissy…One thing I wasn’t prepared for in learning to dance is getting in touch with my feminine side

DeLay showed his GOP-party animal side cha-cha-ing to “Wild Thing” then tripped the lights fantastic in Viennese waltz. His score was enough to get him back next week.

Yet another bizarre example of Glenn Beck’s need to be provocative even when it makes no sense: He declares that John McCain would have been a worse president than Barack Obama.

And while that is certainly true, it is “incoherent” (as right-wing radio talker Mark Levin angrily points out) to claim that a “weird progressive like Teddy Roosevelt” would be worse than a Marxist who hates white people. Internally consistent insanity is just too much to ask, apparently.

Professor Shane O’Mara at Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience in Dublin has written an article which has caught the attention of the mainstream media. Pamela Hess at Associated Press described Prof. O’Mara’s article, Torturing the Brain: On the folk psychology and folk neurobiology motivating ‘enhanced and coercive interrogation techniques’ (PDF), as showing that “the severe interrogation techniques appear based on ‘folk psychology’ — a layman’s idea of how the brain

Filmmaker and art community consultant Patrick Courrielche has made a quite a splash on conservative talk shows by releasing audio clips and transcripts of a conference call that occurred August 10. The purpose of call, which was attended by artists, NEA staff, White House Office of Public Engagement and members of United We Serve, was to discuss engaging communities in the ideas of service, health care and energy and the environment through the use of art.

In his interviews and blogging about this, Patrick Courrielche has not discussed how he came to have the recorded conversations, which may be a way of invoking his right to self-protection, since recording that call was illegal in several states

Three important changes which address a few of my own concerns with the Max Tax.

The Conventional Wisdom, eagerly promoted by a conventional media that keeps pushing the frames of discussion inexorably toward fascism and right-wingery, holds that the Democratic loss of Congress in 1994 — an event so devastating to the party that it’s typically referred to as simply “1994″ in much the same way that Bin Laden’s attacks on the US are referred to as simply “9/11″ — was caused by Bill Clinton’s and

Ben Smith gets a quote from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on Gerry McEntee’s — er, “colorful” description of the Max Baucus bill:

“Gerry has much wisdom,” Trumka said in an interview today, referring to AFSCME President Gerald McEntee, who attacked the bill last week. “We don’t think that the way to provide benefits for everybody is to tax people’s benefits so they end up losing their benefits.”

McEntee, as you’ll recall, led the AFL-CIO convention in a chant of “bullshit” in response to the Baucus bill.  Which, I would concur, is the response of someone with “much wisdom.”