The most absurd part of Lincoln’s attack is that it came just a week or so after she attacked Halter for breaking his pledge to run a positive campaign – based on independent expenditure ads not coordinated with Halter, by law. After this dishonesty, Lincoln goes ahead and starts up a negative smear campaign herself. To quote her, “That didn’t take long.”

Last week, after crazies like Jim DeMint, Pete Hoekstra and Michelle Bachmann started the REPEALgasm, a group of slightly less crazy Republicans, including John Cornyn, Jon Kyl and Newt Gingrich, began to backpedal. Now, Lamar Smith (R-TX), who himself signed on to the repealgasm, admits REPEAL! is all just kabuki.

There is a ballot measure in California to legalize and tax weed this fall, making it legal for anyone over 21 to possess up to an ounce and cultivate whatever they can fit in a 5 x 5 foot plot. It would also allow cities and counties to decide whether to allow sales and tax the proceeds. There has been a lot of recent polling on the issue of marijuana legalization, and the public is divided on the issue. So, we’d like to know where our community stands.

While Republicans have managed to raise fears about some nefarious “government takeover of health care” in general, it appears Americans actually want more government involvement that will protect them from the worst practices of the private health insurance industry.

You can pretty much figure out AHIP’s game here. With no restrictions on cost until 2014, the industry can raise their premium prices almost at will. Even the bad publicity suffered from that 39% rate hike of Anthem Blue Cross plan has not stopped that scheduled increase from taking effect in May. And when outrage is expressed by families facing double-digit rate hikes, AHIP will clear their throats and blame the pre-existing condition exclusion for children, forcing the poor insurance companies to take on a sicker risk pool and raise prices to survive.

A key reason reason officials are so worried about information on Abu Zubaydah — including that contained in Zubaydah’s diaries — coming out is that it’ll show the massive intelligence failure that resulted in the conclusion that he was a top al Qaeda officer. The drawings in the diaries may also show the acts of torture perpetrated on Zubaydah.

You can tell that financial reform will be the next heavy lift in Washington because everyone’s chattering about it today, and proposing a variety of solutions. But they actually come down to something a lot simpler than what’s being proposed: regulators need a few clear rules, and they need to do their jobs.

Eugene Robinson has a great column about this today.

Oliver North and Sean Hannity — con artists? Oh there’s a real shocker.

Featuring new love videos with Don Henry’s “Back on The Farm Again” and “Love Song for Camus” by I Am The Dot.