Today’s installment of Republicans Are Totally Not Racist At All Nope pays tribute to Kansas state rep. Connie O’Brien, who has zeroed in on a foolproof way to identify undocumented immigrants:

Despite jobs being by far the top issue with voters, the Republicans in Congress, in their rush for immediate austerity, have committed themselves to making the unemployment crisis worse. Among the many cuts in the House Republican’s continuing resolution are cuts to “excess spending in Labor Department job training programs” and eliminating funds for AmeriCorps.

When the House passed a 10-month extension of key provisions of the Patriot Act last night, it was assumed that the Senate would follow suit quickly. And they will vote on the measure tonight. However, they will narrow the extension to three months, in a move with bipartisan support.

The London Times is reporting (behind the greed wall) that General David Patreus’s days as leader of coalition forces in Afghanistan are numbered.

It seems very likely to me that had Bruce Ivins not died, the analysis carried out by a panel from the National Academy of Sciences in assessing the scientific evidence tying Ivins to the 2001 anthrax attacks would have led to reasonable doubt on whether Ivins carried out the attacks. For this post, let us concentrate only on the NAS response to FBI claims on the spores used in the attack, especially with regard to how the spores were prepared.

I was on that call, and while “mostly boring” is rather accurate given the limited questions and stage managed nature of these calls, the idea that the call was “an indication that the president’s base was not particularly upset” is ridiculous.

An extremely large crowd of 5,000 activists, by some estimates, has gathered at the state Capitol in Madison, protesting the attempt by Governor Scott Walker and Republicans to strip collective bargaining rights for public employees. Earlier today, high school students in a nearby city in Wisconsin walked out of class in solidarity with their teachers.

It is important to put budget issues in perspective, so I have a simple request that President Obama, the top members of his administration, and his allies in Congress send a hand written version of this letter to constituents.

I was on this blogger conference call with Kenneth Baer from OMB and David Plouffe about the 2012 Obama budget. Michael Shear of the NYT interviewed someone on the call who described it as “mostly boring.” I didn’t think so, although I would say that of Shear’s article (“What do liberals on Twitter think of the Obama budget?”)

As scary as CPAC was, keep in mind: it was insufficiently wingnutty for a whole swath of the right-wing movement, as Erick Erickson helpfully reminds us.