What we saw happen in Egypt over the past few weeks and the final joyous hours was a citizen-led movement. It was a worker-led movement as well, with female beneficiaries of micro-finance and youth entrepreneurs and the working class taking to the streets to air their grievances about their personal conditions. It was not a Western-led coup, or something the West even had a whole lot of leverage to effect. In his final days, the Mubarak regime tried to claim a grand conspiracy of foreign operatives and satellite news channels angling to push them out, a play to nationalist fervor. But that’s not what happened. The people in the street toppled them.

President Obama spoke to that today in his remarks.

The latest YouGov poll for The Economist has found a solid majority, 58 percent of Americans, agree that marijuana should be regulated and taxed just like like alcohol and tobacco. Almost as important, the poll found that only 23 percent disagreed with the idea of treating cannabis like alcohol.

Way back in the day when I was just a mere independent blogger and not THE MEDIA ENTIRE I wrote about the practice lobbyists engaged in on the climate change bill, forging letters to members of Congress and claiming they came from grassroots organizations. I labeled the practice “astroforging.”

This was a fairly noteworthy scandal, and it appeared that no lobbyist would try such a tactic ever again.

That took about a year.

The negative costs of our nation’s “war on drugs” reach into so many aspects our country that they are almost impossible to count. This isn’t just the direct cost of incarceration, enforcement, and the loss of tax revenue, there are also the many less obvious costs such as long-term lower wages for those with drug-related criminal records and, as I recently learned, the destruction of our domestic flower industry.

If you’ve been following Marcy Wheeler, you know about the ChamberLeaks scandal which has erupted in the past 48 hours. According to hacked documents, a series of private security firms pitched a strategy to the US Chamber of Commerce to engage in smear campaigns against opponents of the Chamber’s work. The Chamber had several particular organizations in mind, including ThinkProgress, Change to Win, the SEIU, StopTheChamber.com and US Chamber Watch. And they hired a lobbying firm, Hunton and Williams, to go out to these private security firms and develop a campaign of sabotage. This included going after individuals and their families associated with these organizations.

Brad Friedman is the co-founder of the group VelvetRevolution.us, which created StopTheChamber.com, which is unaffiliated to the union-led US Chamber Watch effort. He was actually subbing for Mike Malloy on his national radio show last night when he heard the news. “I learned just before showtime about the attacks on my organization, but during the show I found out they had targeted me and my family,” Friedman said in an interview. “I used it to help explain how appalling and disgusting and anti-American these creeps are at US Chamber of Commerce.”

One of the more interesting documents on HBGary et al’s partnership with the Chamber of Commerce details the prices they wanted to charge. Now, other emails make it clear that the Chamber balked at what the team originally proposed would be $2 million of work–the Chamber didn’t pay these rates (indeed, they probably haven’t paid for any of this).

But I was particularly interested in what HBGary’s Aaron Barr proposed charging for the work of what they called a “Social Media SME.”

President Obama just delivered remarks on the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. A transcript will be posted when available. In the meantime, here is Robert Gibbs with a press briefing, as streamed live by the White House.

Senators Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer jumped all over comments today by a House Republican that essentially threatened a government shutdown over the continuing resolution on the Fiscal Year 2011 budget. They asked House leadership to clarify whether they agree that a government shutdown is possible in the next three weeks, when the current continuing resolution expires.

The obvious goal here is to paint the GOP as extreme and rigid, and the Democrats as willing to compromise for the sake of the nation. The phrase “let’s use a meat axe instead of a scalpel” came up a lot. Only once did Reid manage to mention that the goal should be creating jobs at this point, not a monomaniacal focus on the deficit.

Congratulations to the Egyptian people!

Krugman touched on this today and yesterday on his blog, but it’s worth taking a closer look at. Ron Paul held hearings on monetary policy yesterday and his star witness was a crazy person.