Once you’re rich as hell, taxes just aren’t that big a deal. If you live in a half-million house, one would imagine you’re not so completely in hock that a $34 annual increase in your taxes so that schoolchildren in your town can have textbooks that don’t refer to the USSR won’t ruin you.

What I find even more troubling than Romney’s incredible ignorance is that this remark wasn’t some offhanded comment at a town hall, but was in a clearly planned op-ed directed at likely Republican primary voters.

There’s a very good reason that the President and leading Democrats want to force disclosure on political spending through either an executive order or a lawsuit against the FEC. It’s because without disclosure, the tendency will be to keep this stuff hidden. Corporations will not disclose voluntarily.

In GasHole, using interviews and witty archival footage, directors Scott D. Roberts and Jeremy Wagene, take us on a rollicking and insightful ride through the history of oil prices and the manipulations involved to keep prices high and profits flowing.

The Democratic party has made it very clear they intend to make a big issue out of the House Republican budget that would end Medicare and replace it with a privatized voucher program. The DCCC has put together another ad hammering Republicans for this vote.

When former Solicitor General Paul Clement’s firm, King & Spalding, was chosen by Speaker of the House John Boehner to represent the interests of those who want the Defense of Marriage Act defended in federal court, after President Obama announced his Administration would no longer defend DOMA, there was a quick (and now successful) grassroots backlash against the firm.

Today, King & Spalding announced they were withdrawing from representation of DOMA in federal court, and senior partner Paul Clement resigned from the firm.

Let’s make no mistake, this incursion into Deraa is a preface to a massacre, along the lines of the massacre of Benghazi that was halted by coalition airstrikes. Press Secretary Jay Carney tried a pass at describing Libya as a unique situation to prevent mass carnage, but you have tanks rolling into the streets of Deraa. That just doesn’t logically follow.

But Carney also said something else, letting his slip show. He said that Libya was unique because of the support of the Arab League. And that’s the real point here. Syria is a member of the Arab League, as was Libya until Moammar Gadhafi was expelled.

Health insurance is extremely complex and people just don’t have the knowledge about how an insurance policy works and the statistical likelihood of developing medical problems to know what is the best deal for them. This task is made even more difficult by the fact that insurance companies have a huge profit incentive to make their products difficult to understand (for example, hiding the cost of care to give them the lower sticker price on the exchanges).

This means that the likely scenario is a SCOTUS hearing after the appeals complete sometime in the next session, and a ruling right in the middle of the Presidential election in June 2012.

The new Wikileaks document release on Guantanamo consists of intelligence assessments of Guantanamo detainees whose factual basis is hopelessly compromised, not least by “facts” produced under torture. Former detainee David Hicks’s supporters are fighting back with a press release detailing the many government lies and errors.