A federal judge in Virginia has ruled that the individual mandate, a key component of the health care law, is unconstitutional – a decision that, if upheld, could ultimately unravel much of the law.

I know most Americans don’t pay attention to the day-to-day political fighting in Washington, but I suspect many voters will have heard that Obama reached a deal with Republicans on a hugely expensive tax cut deal. When roughly a third of voters actually see their taxes go up, even slightly, I imagine they will not be happy with Obama. Once again, Washington will pass a massive piece of legislation, like TARP or health care reform, and they will not see any benefits.

Washington exists to pay off the rich so we can give a crumb to everyone else. It’s a model of a government captured by oligarchs.

The reason some of us were insistent that what Bernie Sanders was doing on Friday was not really a filibuster was that it did nothing to stop or even slow down the advance of the tax cut bill. Today, the Senate will hold the first cloture vote, on the motion to proceed, and it’s expected to pass with up to 70 votes.

Now comes the bellicose fixation of the United States government on criminally prosecuting WikiLeak’s editor-in-chief Julian Assange. What started out as the usual idiotic yammering of Rep. Peter King and Sen. Joe Lieberman has turned into an apparently dedicated and determined effort by the Department of Justice to charge Assange. As the following discussion will demonstrate, it will require dicey and novel extrapolation of legal theories and statutes to even charge Assange, much less actually convict him.

This is not just a destructive and myopic scheme to effect prior restraint in a digital world, it is laughable from the point of legal foundation.

• Well, at least David Broder is happy.
• Krugman: short-term boosts aren’t enough.
• Dean: do not primary Obama in 2012.
• MC Steele, we hardly knew ye.
• The best Senate money can buy.
• What a wuss.

Oh what a lovely decade we’ve had thanks to the Supreme Court…and what fighting the Democrats haven’t made.

Bobby Darin – Simple Song of Freedom and Pete Seeger – Bring ‘em Home

There are people who are more clever at saying “”We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” They can sound stern and correct and sure of themselves. But their convincing manner doesn’t have anything to do with their understanding of the facts.

They are only more persuasive little monkeys. And we other little monkeys are often all too easily persuaded by them.

You see the usual gathering of so called Democratic strategists and former advisers support extending the Bush tax cuts. Translation: the losers brigade has arrived to save the day.