The New Jersey state Assembly, with a large Democratic majority, gave final approval yesterday to a bill that eliminates collective bargaining rights for public employee health care benefits and imposes the equivalent of a pay cut by increasing health and pension contributions. Unions in New Jersey actually have no collective bargaining guarantee other than health benefits, so this eliminates pretty much their main bargaining chip.

Just say now, baby.

As ever the Republican brand of bipartisanship is to threaten to burn down the town if the Democrats don’t hand over the matches.

Gym Class Heroes — Cupid’s Chokehold/Breakfast In America, featuring Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy.

Doesn’t the drug-selling President’s announcement mean the surge worked and all the soldiers can come home now?

Today a small bipartisan group of House members lead by Ron Paul (R-TX) and Barney Frank (D-MA) introduced the “Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011.”

The injured, exiled President of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, could return to the country as early as tomorrow.

As you will recall, Tom Drake was belligerently prosecuted by the DOJ on trumped up espionage charges (See: here, here, here and here) and their case fell out from underneath them because they cravenly wanted to hide the facts. As a result, Drake pled guilty to about the piddliest little misdemeanor imaginable, and will be sentenced, undoubtedly, to no incarceration whatsoever, no fine and one year or less of unsupervised probation on July 15, 2011. But the entire Tom Drake matter emanated out of Drake’s attempt to internally, and properly, cooperate with a whistleblowing to the Department of Defense Inspector General.

Dave Weigel caught Mitch McConnell making the novel statement that tax cuts don’t work.

Ho hum. Here we are once again. The weekly report of Initial Unemployment Claims is out, jobless claims for last week are up “more than expected,” the figures from last week’s report have been revised upwards again, economists are surprised and water is wet.