Whether you think this is a kabuki dance or not (and I’m pretty certain the debt limit will be increased), it’s pretty clear that Republicans want to play out the string on this, and won’t stop until Wall Street makes some tangible signal to raise borrowing costs or come close to a meltdown. We are headed for the kind of moment we saw with TARP, where lawmakers agree to something under extreme pressure. As Digby says, that doesn’t usually go well.

The news for Mitt Romney has been pretty good lately; he leads the Republican presidential field in the the latest Gallup poll of the race.

I mean, are we supposed to worry that the government can’t conduct timely surveillance on a non-U.S. person ‘lone wolf’ terrorist such as an individual who has self radicalized and responds to international terrorist calls to attack the United States,” when the government has never had a need to use this authority, not even with Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, who was a “a non-U.S. person ‘lone wolf’ terrorist such as an individual who has self radicalized and responds to international terrorist calls to attack the United States”?

It took the Obama Administration years to build a case against a few financial firms for their role in the 2008 oil spike, but at least they’ve gotten around to it. The people most equipped to know the existence of the problem were screaming to the government at the time that speculation, not supply and demand, was driving prices.

When the government, through its executive and compliant Congress, wants to cut surveillance and privacy corners out of laziness and control greed, and otherwise crush the soul of the Constitution and the 4th Amendment, demagoguery and fake exigencies are the order of the day. And so they are again. Oh, and of course they want to get out of town on their vacation. And that is what has happened today.

This was the first vote on the Afghan war since the killing of Osama bin Laden. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi gave it a huge boost by announcing she would vote for it this morning, in defiance of the Obama Administration’s strategy.

Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi has struck down Wisconsin’s anti-union law, which strips most collective bargaining rights from public employees, because she found that the legislature violated the state’s open meetings requirements in passing the law.

The Quitter is causing quite a stir with reports that she’ll be releasing a $1 million-dollar hagiography in Iowa, just in time for the caucuses. And based on early reviews, it appears that at some point, God instructed her to drive the English from Fairbanks.

Getting waivers from HHS is going to be an important part of any state plan to implement their own single payer system. And President Obama has already expressed his support for allowing states to begin receiving waivers from the ACA in 2014 rather than 2017. That’s why FDL is joining with PNHP to ask both the President and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to commit to granting Vermont the waivers it needs to make Green Mountain Care the best program it can possibly be for the people of Vermont.

You can sign the petition here.

I don’t know if the nonsense Op-Ed by Matt Miller is due to him being too lazy to actually research the subject or him purposely choosing to spread misinformation for ideological reasons, but either way, it is a pathetic defense of the Republicans Medicare privatization plan.