The announcement by Sen. Herb Kohl (WI) that he will not be seeking re-election makes him the sixth member of the Democratic caucus that has chosen not to run again this year. With Democrats forced to defend 23 of the 33 senate seats up in 2012, the loss of the incumbent advantage in another race is a minor setback for the party as it hopes to retain control of the Senate in 2012.

Rarely do lies simply go out in the world and stand on their own. To have staying power, they require a complex network of ancillary lies and human enablers (sometimes knowing, sometime unwitting) who create a web of falsehood. These tangled webs can drain families’ bank accounts, get people killed, cause great institutions to fall, even help crash an economy.

It takes a special kind of bully to target the most vulnerable and neediest families in society, which millionaire politicians like to argue are draining America’s treasury. I am referring to Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA), who recently introduced a bill that would require states to implement drug testing of applicants for and recipients of the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

And if it weren’t for WikiLeaks, we would know little about the multiple times our government bullied other countries to drop investigations of rendition and torture (one I’m certain we’ll see repeated when the President visits Poland later this month).

President Obama announced in his weekly address a plan to open part of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska to oil drilling. Through an executive order, the President would also extend leases in the Gulf of Mexico for oil concerns that were subject to the moratorium on deepwater drilling after the BP oil disaster, as well as speeding up evaluation of resources in the Atlantic, extending other leases in Alaska and building incentives for oil and gas companies to use land they own on existing leases on land and sea.

Sometime today, the US Army Corps of Engineers will open the Morganza Floodway in Louisiana for the second time in its history. The object is to divert some of the huge flow of water coming down the Mississippi away from the usual path that streams past Baton Rouge and New Orleans into the Mississippi delta, and into a largely agricultural region of Louisiana instead. It’s a Hobson’s choice, where agricultural fields and various small towns will be flooded in order to help save many the lives and livelihoods, and communities of millions of Louisiana residents nearer to the Mississippi’s regular pathways.

This is Katrina in reverse, with the water coming from the north rather than from the Gulf. Let’s hope the lessons learned from flooding in the past that led to the creation of the floodways will help, and that the post-disaster recovery efforts that failed so spectacularly with Katrina have been improved this time around.

I’m sorry. I apologize. It’s all my fault that the Obama administration won’t release the Osama bin Laden death-porn-shot-in-the-eye pictures.

What does that say about DOJ, then, that the Senate is doing such a better job at investigating crimes? In just one month’s time the Senate has produced two investigations that have left DOJ–and the SEC and FEC–looking toothless by comparison.

Ever throw salt on a slug, or holy water on a vampire? The resulting reaction is pretty similar to the one achieved whenever someone mentions the inherent racism and bigotry of the modern Republican and conservative movements.

Time was, when we thought our biggest garden menace were the groundhogs, though we have always found that if we ‘encouraged’ outdoor kitties in the area, the amount of détente that could be achieved in the tooth and claw area was enough to establish a certain balance in our garden.