Tonight, for the first night in the last 86, there is no oil known to be flowing (as of this writing) from the blown out BP well in the Gulf of Mexico. The valves on the new cap on the well have been closed, and BP and the government are now on a 48 hour watch to see what happens. But there is no guarantee the well will hold. And there’s still all that oil.

Also, Goldman Sachs has settled with the SEC to pay a fine equivalent to two weeks’ worth of their profits. Happy days all around!

The beginning of this Bloomberg story is completely false:

Most Americans oppose President Barack Obama’s ban on deepwater oil drilling in response to BP Plc’s Gulf of Mexico spill, even as they hold the company primarily responsible for the incident.

Almost three-fourths, or 73 percent, say a ban is unnecessary, calling the worst oil spill in U.S. history a “freak accident,” according to a Bloomberg National Poll.

Without looking at the poll’s toplines (PDF), you might not realize what is wrong with these two paragraphs. As it turns out, Bloomberg’s poll did not ask about President Obama’s temporary ban on deepwater drilling.

A program being run through Department of Defense that is supposed to help small businesses subcontract with large businesses does the complete opposite and no one seems to know about it…

Few things better demonstrate the ludicrous futility of the Senate’s deficit hysteria than Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s (D-AR) and John Kyl’s (R-AZ) long fight to cut the estate tax

For the first time since Macondo, the Mouth Of Hell, first blew out in a fiery explosion on April 20, killing eleven men in the process, BP seems to have the well under control and there appears to be no hydrocarbons leaking into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

There seemed to be an otherworldly presence in the hearing room Tuesday when a Congressional committee began formal consideration of new coal mine safety legislation.

Aside from the fact that Karl Rove’s latest Wall Street Journal op-ed operates on the erroneous foundation that the Administration shared all the intelligence they juiced up with Congress (they didn’t), the entire op-ed is based on an absolutely delusional sense of timing.

In a poll just released today, Time provides results that show Americans staunchly opposed to cuts in Social Security, Medicare or healthcare, but in favor of cutting spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. With Alan Simpson and the Catfood Commission so determined to cut Social Security and Medicare, we can now state that they are going directly against over 80% of citizens in this effort.

Barnes said, “We don’t have to make a choice between reform and making sure teachers are able to stay in the classroom,” and that if the education jobs fund got paid for with a sliver of stimulus money dedicated to the Race to the Top program, they would recommend a veto.

In this interview Jay Bybee admits that the CIA had no authorization for the techniques that contributed to Gul Rahman’s death. Hello, special prosecutor John Durham?