Some overnight developments that struck my fancy…and you know how painful that can be.

The Herd at fly-fishing camp on the St. Joe River, with music by Greg Brown — Eugene.

There’s nothing at all legitimate about a so-called report which relies on the input of world-class bigots like Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin (Ret.).

Ever since the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the U.S.-Russia New START nuclear-reductions accord this afternoon, I’ve received statements from President Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretaries Gates and Clinton and Senator Kerry. All of them are cheering the vote, in order to get the press to write about the Big Victory they recorded today. And indeed: it’s a step forward for a treaty that any sensible person would have to conclude deserves ratification.

The trouble is that none of these statements actually explain, hint at or otherwise indicate how to get 67 votes in the Senate for the treaty.

Well now I know which smear is going to be used to shrug off Sardasht Osman’s murder. They are trying to make people believe that it was a punishment murder by Ansar al-Islam!

Prince Poppycock is important for America because he makes a statement just by being himself and performing in full outrageous historical drag. On September 7 Poppycock showcased a message, singing a medley of “The Star Bangled Banner,” “Yankey Doodle Boy” and “Stars and Stripes Forever” while images of American civil liberty heroes Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks and Harvey Milk screened behind him. America loved it, and voted yet again to keep him in the competition and into the finals.

This is what many of us have been calling for since the beginning of the Presidency, for someone to break the Geithner/Summers stranglehold on marcoeconomic policy. Warren will at least have a chance to take her concerns right to the President, and not just on consumer protection. She would have the Assistant to the President title, the top access level at the White House, at the same level as Rahm Emanuel and only a dozen other advisers, and arguably more access to the President than cabinet members have. We don’t know exactly what meetings she will be in on and what she won’t, but at a very fundamental level, she gets an entryway into the White House’s inner circle and will have a presence there. In other words, this is the “team of rivals” that Obama has been claiming but hasn’t existed on macroeconomic policy. It has the potential to move the center of gravity in the Oval Office away from the banks.

Go read this entire Charlie Savage article describing the deliberations within the Administration on how to respond to ACLU/CCR’s lawsuit challenging the government’s ability to target American citizens for assassination with no due process. The whole thing makes me want to cry about what our country has become (Congratulations Osama bin Laden! You’ve won!).

Rivkin is, of course, the former Reagan and Poppy Bush official that Republicans like to roll out any time they need an absolute unquestioning supporter of unlimited executive power. His job is effectively to put legal lipstick on the power hungry pig that has grown out of 9/11.

But he refuses to endorse the legal approach Obama’s DOJ is reportedly considering: to try to get the Awlaki suit dismissed by invoking state secrets.

Yesterday, I mentioned the Office of the Homeowner Advocate, an attempt by Sen. Al Franken to get an independent review process for HAMP, the Treasury Department foreclosure mitigation program which has failed homeowners while merely extending foreclosures out a bit and squeezing additional payments into the hands of the banks. Today, this common-sense effort to get some accountability and oversight over what the banks have been doing in HAMP has found its way into a new version of the tax extenders bill, a catch-all, end-of-the-year effort that could be a vehicle for several measures which have hung around in the Senate.

The Afghanistan Study Group report is out, and the fight is on. A number of critiques have been leveled at the report, one of the most influential being Joshua Foust’s over at Registan.net, chunks of which are percolating upward into larger outlets. Foust is a smart guy with whom I regularly debate, but there’s a particularly offensive landmine hiding at the end of Foust’s post that I want to highlight, where Foust states that the anti-war movement “relies on assumption and beliefs to shape reality”.