Rahm Emanuel’s horse trading with the Governor of Illinois while Rahm was a Congressman should come as no surprise. The only problems with this is that said Governor was Rod Blagojevich and the transactions will be aired out at trial while Rahm serves as White House Chief of Staff.

There’s encouraging news that the panel tasked with investigating the disaster in the Gulf wants to actually get it right.

A lot has been said and I’m sure a lot more will be said on the primary challenge Bill Halter mounted against Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, a primary challenge I was glad to help work on. In the lessons learned category, I recommend Jane’s post, which goes through a history of intentional primary challenges we often forget and gives an overview of what outside groups can learn when engaging in these tactics.

In trying to identify exactly what went on in Arkansas I’ve been taking a close look at the numbers and I’ve come to a few conclusions. I’ll lay out the full set of numbers here as well so folks can draw their own.

As the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico approaches its 2-month mark, there are a few points that deserve to be made, as update. The world is now starting to appreciate the enormity of this disaster, which is likely already the largest “accidental” oil spill in history.

Last year, a bunch of you donated money to support the work I do. That money has supported–and continues to support–my work on accountability and rule of law. At a time when some folks in DC wanted me to work for them on completely different issues, for example, your support allowed me to instead spend over six weeks wading through OPR documents to expose key details about our torture regime. Your support allowed me to get research materials and travel to do research. Your support allowed me to continue to focus on topics–like torture and wiretapping–that I wouldn’t have had the time to research otherwise.

Now, I’m asking for your donation of $20, $50–or whatever you can afford–to support our larger FDL effort: our fight for real financial reform, for improvements to the health care bill, to save social security, for a real climate change bill, for some sanity in our Afghan policy. Your support will go to keep the servers running, the editors preparing content, the moderators ensuring the vitality of our ongoing conversation. Your support will go to ensure that our many talented posters will have a place to contribute their work. Your support will help Jane keep this special place running.

On Sunday, Rahm Emanuel said this about Joe Barton’s (R-TX) apology to BP’s CEO. “That’s not a political gaffe, those are prepared remarks,” said Emanuel. “That is a philosophy.” But the Quitter wasn’t having any of it.

Right before a midterm election, the the Repubicans want to announce to likely voters (who tend to be older) that they want to default on the treasury bonds issued to the Social Security trust fund, rather than the Chinese? And that after shoveling billions in taxpayer money into record Wall Street bonuses, the GOP supports “balancing the budget” on the backs of old people?

Wall Street investment banker Peter Peterson has been trying to gut Social Security and Medicare for at least two decades. He has redoubled his efforts in the last few years. One of his projects is America Speaks.

A legitimate Minerals Management Service could have known about the leaking blowout preventer before the blast. It could have acted on the inherent problems with the blind shear ram and the oil industry’s failsafe measures in general (blowout preventers have a 45% failure rate, according to a confidential Transocean report). But we didn’t have a legitimate MMS to deal with this disaster. We have 62 regulators dealing with over 4,000 offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

Sunday on CNN Sen. Joe Lieberman tried to explain that what he had in mind in the way of an Internet kill switch was not a total “All Your Base Are Belong to Us” move, but rather a partial Internet shut down. And why? Because other countries already have that in place and we have to keep up with the Hu Jintaos?