By inventing a new post of “assistant leader” for James Clyburn of South Carolina, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has headed off a leadership fight that threatened the unity of her caucus just as it became drastically smaller.

I am very very grateful that Ryan Grim exposed Bush as a plagiarist on Thursday.

BEAR I: So the guy in charge the American people’s money when dealing with the Goldman Sachs used to be a partner at the Goldman Sachs?

BEAR II: Yes.

BEAR I: And nobody has a problem with this?

BEAR II: Apparently not.

BEAR I: Is this an episode of the Twilight Zone?

So can the Obama administration manage to reach a decision more craven than this one? According to the Washington Post, the months-long internal administration deadlock over trying Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 co-conspirators has resulted in a decision: apoplexy. No trying them in federal courts in New York; no trying them at Guantanamo Bay in a military commission. Just… nothing.

When the votes were tallied on the night of November 2, 2008, I was at a bar in Moab, Utah – the one rabid Democratic stronghold in a rabidly Republican state – to enjoy the hysteria as Barack Obama was summoned to lead the country out of the disaster of eight years of George W. Bush. People shook hands, hooted, clinked glasses, got drunk, raised fists, wept. The good liberals had elected a visionary Democrat to the presidency, who, blessed with a Democratic majority in Congress, would fashion “hope” and “change” into a palpable policy. I was told that in parts of Brooklyn, my hometown, voters ran through the streets banging pots and pans. The feeling was of religious jubilee – the new dispensation was upon us, and 2009 would mark the emancipation from the old rottenness. Corruption and fraud and deceit and war and oligarchy would be washed from the body politic. It was the beginning of the restoration of the republic.

Rand Paul’s grasp of economic theory leans toward the fantastic these days.

I have a counter-proposal to the Republican demand that we must temporarily extend all the Bush tax cuts.  They want to include tax cuts for those making over one million dollars a year, for the next two years, despite the fact that it will add hundreds of billions to the deficit  I suggest President Obama demand that instead of using the money to extend tax cuts for the rich, that it be used to mail every taxpayer a $1,000 check.

As guest on MSNBC’s Countdown, Dan Choi explains the relationship between bullying in schools and DADT to those who don’t understand the relationship.

Today is the 154th birthday of SCOTUS Justice Louis Brandeis, one of the Court’s most forceful voices for freedom of speech and the right to privacy. Today, as AG Eric Holder deals with cases involving torture, wiretapping, state secrets, GQ paints a picture of an AG filled with angst, as Marcy Wheeler summed it up yesterday. But maybe it’s not angst, but that Holder is being haunted by SCOTUS Justices past, like Brandeis, Holmes, Robert Jackson, and Potter Stewart.

Happy birthday, Justice Brandeis, and keep up the good work.

Kentucky’s 6th District was one of the closest House contests this year. The official re-canvasing left incumbent Democrat Ben Chandler with a 648-vote lead over his Republican opponent, Andy Barr. The re-canvasing resulted in the net gain of a single vote for Chandler

After seeing the result of the re-canvasing, Barr decided to concede.