I’ve only been on the FDL front page sporadically for a while now, working behind the scenes on our membership program to prepare for FDL online organizing 2.0. We had our first member organizing call 2 weeks ago, and we’re moving forward with one of the best ideas that was offered — scorecards for candidates in 2012.

Going through literally tens of thousand of government documents to find these few nuggets of information is sadly something very few organizations do well (well, besides large, private lobbying operations), but this is something at which Firedoglake really excels.

Wait. This isn’t 1975? Oh. Nevermind.

The nomination of Goodwin Liu to the 9th Circuit gets a vote in the Senate today, and the prospects are pretty bleak. President Obama nominated Alaska Supreme Court justice Morgen Christen to the 9th Circuit (which has four vacancies) yesterday, drawing praise from Lisa Murkowski. Perhaps this was part of a deal to get Murkowski’s vote for Liu. Other than that, I haven’t seen much of a strategy to get this accomplished, other than trying to force Republicans to be as good as their past statements about filibustering judicial nominations.

One thing will be key – whether Obama calls on Bashar al-Assad to step down. He also should press for continued reform in Egypt: an Amnesty International report shows that the interim government in Egypt is still abusing human rights, and the security agencies remain unfettered by such concerns. There will also be a nod to the Middle East peace process, and the need to restart stalled negotiations.

The supposed logic behind the switch to the top-two primary was to get all candidates to run their campaigns, from the start, directed at everyone in the district across the political spectrum, instead of first catering to the small group of primary voters in each party. So, the candidates are basically already running what we would consider big, expensive, general-election-style campaigns for the “primary,” and they will need to sustain this big, general-election-style campaign for the months until the runoff election.

The great untold story of the Warren era at CFPB is how she has generated a lot of goodwill from bank trade groups. In this case, she has something to offer both bankers and consumers.

Jared Bernstein’s new blog reads like the exploding diarrhea of common sense ideas that were quashed within the Obama White House.

• IMF needs a new Galtian Overlord.
• Frothy Mixture: McCain’s wrong about torture.
• Damn it feels good to be a bankster.
• SC GOP: innumerate, ignorant and bigoted.
• Defund the oligarchy.

I bet the man even knows the chorus to “Sweet Georgia Brown”.