The most dangerous plans I’ve seen coming out of the debt limit talks are chained CPI and the Medicaid blended rate. I’ve written extensively about chained CPI, which would cause a Social Security benefit cut of hundreds of dollars a year for the average beneficiary. The way that can be most easily combated is by calling it what it is – a tax increase. Only $100 billion of the $300 billion projected savings in chained CPI comes from Social Security; the other $200 billion comes from the effect of slowing the cost of living adjustment in other programs, including… tax brackets.

School districts all over the country are reducing school days, firing teachers, eliminating summer school, closing libraries, and eliminating “non-essential” programs. It’s not because the country is “broke” but because this wealthy country has chosen to do this. I don’t think this is how you even get to the future, let alone “win” it.

A first-ever presidential Twitter town hall with President Barack Obama kept questions from Twitter users focused to jobs and the economy, avoiding the many questions on the wars, foreign policy and civil liberties issues that have primarily been created because of legislation and policies deemed necessary to prosecute a “war on terrorism.”

The courts are following the evolving determinations of one of the litigants in the case. If repeal has passed and is about to be certified, and if the same Administration is withdrawing their support for laws discriminating against same-sex couples on the grounds that they are unconstitutional, the court had no choice but to lift the stay. “The circumstances and balance of hardships have changed,” wrote the Ninth Circuit, “and [the government] can no longer satisfy the demanding standard for issuance of a stay.”

Perhaps the best way to look at the possibility of President Obama using the 14th amendment to declare the debt ceiling unconstitutional, is not to wonder if Obama has the will to use it, but question whether he has the resolve it would take not use it.

The reports that two of the foreign flagged ships planning to be part of the ten vessel Freedom Flotilla II experienced similar forms of disabling sabotage creates strong circumstantial evidence of Israeli responsibility. It stretches the imagination to suppose that a sophisticated cutting of the propeller shafts of both ships is a coincidence with no involvement by Israel’s Mossad, long infamous for its overseas criminal acts in support of contested Israeli national interests.

The Twitter town hall with President Obama actually produced a decent question. Renegade Nerd asked: “Mr. President, will you issue an executive order to raise the debt ceiling pursuant to section 4 of the 14th amendment?”

Yves Smith set off a firestorm in her criticism of several progressive groups that have joined forces with Pete Peterson to whip up deficit hysteria. There are three issues that need to be addressed.

The notion that Ronald Reagan couldn’t make it out of the primary in today’s Teahadist GOP has been a favorite meme on the left for years. After all, Reagan raised taxes eleven times, signed one of the largest tax increases in US history, signed a SHAMNESTY! bill, sought to ban nuclear weapons, passed one of the most liberal abortion laws in the country, was a former union president as well as a divorced former Democrat who was married to a practitioner of astrology.

Well, this idea is increasingly popular on the right as well.

Since 2006, the FBI has been quietly creating a massive new biometric database that is, in their words, “Bigger- Better- Faster.” Known as the “Next Generation Identification” program, or NGI, this new system marks a dramatic leap in the FBI’s ability to collect, store and share indentifying information across government agencies. Alarm bells should ring for all Americans concerned with their privacy.