If Republicans think that their Medicare privatization plan is an albatross around their necks now, just see what they try to do if they nominate the author of that plan to be their standard bearer in 2012.

The Dawn Media Group in partnership with WikiLeaks has been releasing the “Pakistan Papers,” cables from the trove of more than 250,000 US State Embassy cables that WikiLeaks obtained which specifically deal with Pakistan. Thus far, some of the revelations include the following: Pakistan’s military asked for continued drone coverage, the US has had troops deployed on Pakistan soil, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been financing jihadist groups in Pakistan and the US did not provide Benazir Bhutto with proper security.

I interviewed Raza Rumi, a writer based in Lahore, Pakistan, who regularly writes for the Pakistani weekly The Friday Times, The News and Daily DAWN.

Single mother, Academy Award nominated filmmaker and world traveler Justine Shapiro takes her six-year-old son Mateo to Tehran for summer vacation where they spend time with three diverse families. It’s a simple set up that is poignant and effective in showing us real and very different perspectives on the Iran and its people than those gleaned from news footage. Justine wants to meet Iranian mothers in their homes before their sons meet on the battlefields.

So let’s see. At some point during the anthrax attacks in 2001, USAMRID and AFIP decided to do anthrax tests on material from Flight 93. They purportedly found the hijackers tested positive for anthrax! But on second thought, FBI tells us, that positive result came from “lab contamination.” And then, presumably just after those tests, USAMRID and AFIP, perhaps working outside the chain of the official FBI investigation of anthrax, discover evidence implicating Iraq in the anthrax attacks. Results that, once again, further testing suggested was inaccurate.

Here’s a little extra incentive for joining today: Click the link, join at any level, post in comments that you’ve joined, and you’ll get a little bonus.

Aside from knowing that you’re supporting independent media and hard-hitting, effective journalism, I’ll mail you a DVD of one of the films FDL has featured on Movie Night.

So come on, jump into the ‘lake, the water’s pure and unadulterated by corporate BS and lickspittle politics.

The Senate will vote later today on a motion to proceed to S.1038 which would extend three expiring provisions of the Patriot Act for four years, with almost no debate.

UPDATE: The Senate passed cloture 74-8, so they’ll proceed to the bill. Final passage is expected Wednesday.

When basically the entire House Republican caucus voted for Paul Ryan’s budget, which includes a “plan” to destroy the very popular Medicare program and replace it with insufficient private vouchers, I couldn’t tell if they made such a terrible political move because they were so trapped in their own ideological bubble that they actually thought Americans wanted to eliminate Medicare, or they were so ideologically driven that they were determined to push radical right-wing social engineering despite it being highly unpopular.

Politico reports it is was mainly the latter.

The Government Accountability Board, the overseer of statewide elections in Wisconsin, threw out most challenges to recall petitions for three Republican state Senators. This means that the recall elections will almost certainly go forward in those three races, against Sens. Dan Kapanke, Luther Olsen and Randy Hopper.

In other Wisconsin news, the recount in the state Supreme Court race between Republican David Prosser and Democrat JoAnne Kloppenburg has finished.

Do you know the chances that you will be rushed to the hospital in the next 12 months? Do you know the likelihood you will need major knee surgery this year? Do you know the probability you will get cancer that requires chemo?

The Supreme Court ruled in a long-standing case in California, ending an odyssey that has spanned two governors. They said today that the state is violating the Constitutional rights of prisoners by holding them in overcrowded lockups without adequate medical care. It upheld the ruling by a federal appeals court that California must release some of those prisoners.