Senator Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma, is committed to opposing a supplemental spending bill that includes $33.5 billion to escalate war in Afghanistan, unless the funds to pay for it are found.

Tomorrow, May 18, there are three highly contested Democratic primaries for US Senate seats: Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Arkansas. In each race, the more left-leaning Democratic candidate is currently polling as the most electable.

In the BP disaster we have seen a pattern from MMS of outright ignoring their responsibilities. So it’s worth probing again the failures at the agency. And the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform plans to do just that.

WaPo’s Greg Sargent asks — is the White House bracing for an Arlen Specter loss? Is that why Joe Biden won’t do last-minute events with Specter? It may have something to do with the numbers that Quinnipiac is seeing.

I know I’ve been out of the country for a couple weeks, and I’m seriously jet lagged — but this headline over at Sullivan’s place took me a bit by surprise.

The biggest day on the primary calendar all year takes place tomorrow, with elections in four states and some of the most interesting storylines of the 2010 campaign. Activists on the left and right have battles against the establishment which will be decided tomorrow, and Democrats and Republicans have the opportunity to declare victories which they will spin into a narrative about November.

New polls in western states such as California, Washington and Colorado show that lifting marijuana prohibition has strong plurality if not majority support. Ending the failed war on cannabis and replacing it with a system of legalization, regulation and taxation is becoming a mainstream view in some western states.

One of the smartest things I’ve heard in the Wall Street reform debate came from (predictably) Sen. Ted Kaufman, who said that financial regulations have a half-life. They only take so long before someone enterprising on the Street figures out how to circumvent them. The stronger they are, the longer that half-life – the Depression-era [...]

In what has been billed locally in southeast Michigan as the first Arab-American to win, Michigan’s Rima Fakih won the Miss USA pageant tonight. How come beauty pageants have become the big focus of politics of late?

Early this morning, Iran signed a deal with Turkey and Brazil that would enable it to pursue a civilian nuclear energy strategy, while swapping the fuel on Turkish soil to calm fears that it was enriching uranium for military purposes.