Once again, the Republicans are willing to negotiate. As long as you give them everything they want.

Blondie -The Dream’s Lost On Me

The Speaker may have hired Paul Clement without legal or fiscal authority to do so, risking criminal charges. Spending federal funds without explicit legislative authorization or appropriation is a violation of federal law that carries a fine and a possible prison sentence.

Matt spent the evening with the McSuedermans where McMegan served Frito-Chili pie that she whipped up in the food processor (while explaining that her grandmother could not have done this in the forties because people back then didn’t have food processors, Frito’s, chili, or pie) while Peter spent the evening in front of a full-length mirror modeling hipster hats while practicing his look of bemused detachment just in case someone brought up poor children not receiving medical care. Later they sat around drinking craft beers from a microbrewery.

The John Ensign report from the Senate Ethics Committee is really a sad piece of pulp fiction. You have a US Senator in a strong position of power essentially bullying a female subordinate into an affair, refusing to give up on it after being caught several times, finally trying to cover up the evidence of the affair and pay off the participants, and lying and covering his tracks as the plot slowly unravels. That’s about it in a nutshell.

But the details are even seamier.

How does Disney get to trademark a government unit? Shouldn’t they be paying a license fee to the government if they want to make money off Seal Team 6′s success?

This compelling book traces the history of the assault on democracy and the rise of a police state that reached its zenith in the George W. Bush administration. From the war on communism, to the war on labor, to the war terrorism, our government has used surveillance, preventive detention, torture, and a climate of fear to consolidate its power and neutralize dissent. Under the guise of nurturing democracy at home and abroad, the U.S. government has actually undermined it.

The story from Housing Wire sounded pretty formal: the Federal Reserve Bank of New York was stepping up with a plan to fix the looming securitization and chain of title problems in housing, which could cost the big banks tens of billions, if not more, to fix. Given that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is essentially controlled by Wall Street banks, the result of these meetings will undeniably be some kind of legal reverse engineering that will indemnify violations of the law and cure the system.

What kind of unserious child thinks increasing revenues could help lower the debt?

Preet Bharara makes the world safe for hedge fund traders. The rest of you can go hang.