The basic difference between Schakowsky’s plan and Bowles-Simpson is not that it relies more on revenue-raisers than spending cuts – although conservatives will surely highlight this – but who bears the brunt of the pain.

Maybe some are blasé about these changes, but I think it goes to a larger stripping of civil liberties protections for Americans. This is a real and substantive fight over a signature issue, and it’s astonishing to see it waved away in such a cavalier fashion.

As Chase Home Lending CEO David Lowman began his testimony at yesterday’s Senate Banking Committee hearing, a staged demonstration broke out, as a group stood up in unison, unfurled a banner reading “Dave Lowman Lies” and urged homeowners to “Tell Your Stories.” CNN caught it on video, indicating media is beginning to wakeup to the crisis. Share your stories about the foreclosure crisis while media is still paying attention.

We definitely needed another greybeard panel to tell us all to sacrifice to “get our fiscal house in order.” And that’s what we got today, with the Domenici-Rivlin Bipartisan Policy Center report on debt reduction. Pete Domenici is the former Republican Senator from New Mexico who at the end liked to walk around Congress in his pajamas; Alice Rivlin is the deficit scold Democrat who’s a member of the Catfood Commission, providing a report that is basically similar to the Bowles-Simpson report.

When his campaign was still in its infancy last year, Rand Paul sat down with Alex Jones, the nutcase conspiracy monger radio personality based in Austin, Texas. There’s lots of crazy in here — equating police profiling with “thought crimes,” calling Obama supporters “brownshirts,” comparing getting treated for a heart attack with buying a cell phone, expressing skepticism about the swine flu vaccine — and of course, the obligatory Hitler fear-mongering.

A transpartisan coalition on state legislators in New Jersey held a press conference yesterday to announce their intention to seek an end to the TSA’s porno scanner and grope procedures.

Chris Dodd didn’t have many questions in yesterday’s hearing on the foreclosure crisis. But he did use the opportunity to call on Tim Geithner to convene the Financial Stability Oversight Council to prevent this crisis from blowing up the economy.

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee is hosting a confirmation hearing for Michele Leonhart for head of the DEA. Watch live here.

A rabidly anti-pot drug warrior — who temporarily served as DEA Head under Bush — Leonhart has defied Attorney General Eric Holder’s edicts to end raids on medical marijuana dispensaries and believes that the growing violence on the Mexican border is indicative of the Drug War’s success there.

Bean was a member of the Blue Dog caucus and the New Democrat Coalition. Bean voted in support of President Obama’s health care reform; she was one of only 15 Democrats to support the Central American Free Trade Act (CAFTA), and one of only four Dems to side with Republicans against the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act.

This is the kind of direct action the cocktail-weinie set finds most unsettling: real people yelling real questions about real issues while they dart in and out of elite DeeCee hotels for secret meetings with issues lobbyists and White House staffers who aren’t doing much of anything at all to advance the issues they are raising money on throughout the year.