It appears the White House may have gotten itself caught in the kabuki it played with the press on the Russian spies now swapped for some spies in Russian custody. But the timing of the kabuki suggests the target of the spy sting may not have been the illegals, but two Russian officials working under official cover.

For three years, former Time chief political correspondent Eric Pooley has followed the political fight over limiting the amount of carbon pollution emitted by the United States — and the Climate War is his blow-by-blow report from the front. Urgent and timely, the book is a behind-the-scenes page-turner for the green set, a detailed explanation of this country’s national inaction on carbon limits. It’s a rich story of scientists, schemers, politicos and hacks, but the main characters are three men who have tried — and up till now, failed — to forever change the way America uses energy and hopefully help stem global warming.

News media need to present the facts that will reveal the falsity of arguments by “deficit hawks” who oppose the spending needed to end the recession.

John was also one of the world’s few living experts on 5th century B.C. Babylonian Astronomy. He held a Ph.D from Yale from the Philosophy of Science department, and he used to joke that he could just be making it all up and there was nobody alive who would know the difference.

If you’re a Catholic and went to Mass this morning, you know that today’s gospel reading was the parable of the Good Samaritan. Using that as a basis for a sermon on charity, our priest noted that the prevailing pagan concept of charity was at best, a quid pro quo. He cited Plato, who wrote that “a poor man who was no longer able to work because of sickness should be left to die.”

The Urban Institute rapturously supports the economic policies of the elites, including gutting Social Security. Details may matter, but statutes can be changed at the expense of the workers of America.

This week, George Lakoff published a piece called “Disaster Messaging” and Eric Alterman penned an essay called “Kabuki Democracy: Why a Progressive Presidency is Impossible, for Now.” Lakoff and Alterman know what is standing in the way of progressive achievement in America. Let’s call it The Wall. Lakoff speaks of the conservatives’ message advantages. Democrats [...]

Every year, usually around March 31, the Social Security trustees give an update on the stability of the program, as well as Medicare and Medicaid. This report has typically been closely watched to assess not only the actuarial imbalance of the programs, or the dates at which the programs would be unable to pay out fully, but also to assess the trend lines, whether the programs are becoming more or less stable.

At almost every step of the way, BP’s efforts to cap the well spewing oil into the Gulf have wound up making things worse. Let’s hope this doesn’t continue, but for now, we have an uncapped well putting at least 35,000 barrels and maybe as much as 100,000 into the water today (I don’t know why WaPo is foregrounding the 15,000 barrels the last containment dome was catching, implying that no more oil would flow). You can read BP’s entire plan for the next several weeks, both the new cap and the timeline for the relief wells, in this letter to Thad Allen.

The business for today is economics, jobs and immigration. The pleasure is Ferenc Cakó’s sand animation, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Summer.