Not sure why the White House would want to bring in someone, right before Darrell Issa gets the gavel of the House Oversight Committee, involved in a long-ago scandal.

But hey, he might “bring back” the business community! Goody.

On Tuesday, Iowa’s Attorney General Tom Miller testified to the Senate Banking Committee it would be months before the combined AG “investigation” came up with a settlement. That’s almost exactly the moment when the Washington Post posted a story reporting the AGs were close to a settlement.

• How’s that working with Republicans working out?
• But…but…everyone’s worried about spending.
• Pushing back against anti-science propaganda.
• Mr. President, this would be a good start.
• Screw the middle class — who’s looking out for the rich?
• Just what the country needs.

The Washington Post, showing evidence it is slightly worse. Congrats Fred Hiatt.

Baby Got Back, Gilbert and Sullivan Style. From the YouTube description: “The advent of time warp technology offered to Knights of the British Empire has allowed this uniquely satisfying look at Sirs Gilbert and Sullivan’s re-envisioning of fellow Sir Mix-A-Lot’s Baby Got Back. O! What a joy it is for us to hear these three titans working in concert for the first time, and hopefully not the last.” Here’s Sir Mix-A-Lot’s original.

It was only a matter of time before some celebrity’s Naked Airport Machine scan was saved by TSA and uh sent to the media, in this case me. Guess which star is below the fold!

It’s not often that I see three perfect quotes in the same day, so I thought I would gather them all together in one place and hope that maybe, just maybe, someone in the White House will read them.

Showing at least a model of what accountability can look like, the British government will pay reparations to victims of torture at Guantanamo Bay, to absolve British intelligence services of their role.

I wasn’t sure that New START actually would have died when Sen. Kyl argued today against voting on it during the lame-duck. But this statement from Vice President Biden makes me think it’s lights-out.

Failure to pass the New START Treaty this year would endanger our national security. Without ratification of this Treaty, we will have no Americans on the ground to inspect Russia’s nuclear activities, no verification regime to track Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal, less cooperation between the two nations that account for 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, and no verified nuclear reductions. The New START treaty is a fundamental part of our relationship with Russia, which has been critical to our ability to supply our troops in Afghanistan and to impose and enforce strong sanctions on the Iranian government.

I’m pleased to see Jan Schakowsky, a member of the Catfood Commission, release her own deficit reduction plan, and in a way I’m also not pleased by it. It’s certainly better than useful idiots like Mark Warner saying “do the math” in order to cut Social Security. And it’s better than the greybeard panels that are stalking horses for entitlements and defenders of the rich. In the main, I like Schakowsky’s plan, though obviously everyone could add and subtract their own bits. But the problem is that a “deficit reduction plan” doesn’t address what actually causes deficits: namely, recessions.