Here you have McConnell openly admitting the reason there is a bipartisan fetish among the elites in Washington is that it totally destroys democratic accountability.

On a conference call, Democrats Chuck Schumer and Bob Casey today released a report with Alan Krueger of Princeton University showing that the expiration of tax subsidies for the Big 5 oil companies will have no impact on gasoline prices. This is elementary when you consider the economics of the situation. The legislation Democrats have put forward would cancel $21 billion in subsidies over 10 years. The Big 5 oil companies made $35 billion last quarter. They simply would not feel the loss of these tax subsidies whatsoever, and if they “passed them on” to consumers, the resultant price increase could only be measured in fractions of a cent. And US jobs wouldn’t be affected either, Krueger said. “Because the U.S. is such a small producer, eliminating the subsidy would have very little effect in the long run and no effect in the short run on gas prices.”

Pretty easy to see why W. ditched his fake ranch out in the sticks for the poshy ‘burbs of Dallas. It’s so difficult to find decent French cuisine in Crawford these days.

Three countries–one gets 29 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, one gets 26 percent from nuclear, and one gets 20 percent. Guess which one is winning the future. . . or, more to point, guess which one is not.

On Wednesday, I noted that Senator John Kerry (D-MA) was quoted in the Washington Post pointing out the impossibility of David Petraeus’ plan to train Afghan forces to take over security responsibility in Afghanistan after a US pullout. I predicted a ramping up of the Petraeus propaganda machine kicking into gear to protect Petraeus’ reputation as he prepares to assume control of the CIA in his planned preparation for the presidency. Friday’s Los Angeles Times has a remarkable article where we see that the Obama administration is planning to “scale back” training of Afghan forces under cover of saving money. The Times tries to present this as the administration somehow pushing back against Petraeus’ plans, but it looks to me much more like the administration is covering for the abject failure, once again, of Petraeus’ training myth.

The last time Congress voted on withdrawal from Afghanistan was on March 17, and withdrawal got 93 votes, including 8 from Republicans. Since then, Osama bin Laden has been killed in a counter-terrorism mission in Pakistan, taking some of the rationale for war away. Several members in both parties have since questioned the mission in Afghanistan and whether the pace of withdrawal could be accelerated.

The ACLU has filed suit on behalf of FDL blogger David House, the friend of Bradley Manning who had his laptop seized by Homeland Security agents last November.

David joins us in the comments to talk about the suit.

The most interesting aspect of Michael Mukasey’s retort to John McCain’s op-ed calling him a liar is not the content–that’s the same old trite sophism–but rather the publication details of it.

• Republicans hold US economy hostage.
  
• Krugman: seniors, guns and money.
• Will he or won’t he?
• Uh, not the same “Tea Party,” NYT.
• The GOP: making South Carolina Sharia-free since 2011.

If it couldn’t be laminated or outsourced in the prior administration it wasn’t worth doing.