Yves Smith has liberated Beau Biden’s brief to a New York court asking for intervention in the Bank of America mortgage settlement. She finds Delaware Attorney General Biden talking along the same lines as New York AG Eric Schneiderman. Biden’s main objection is that he “does not have sufficient information to evaluate the reasonableness of the proposal.” But he goes further to say that his preliminary investigation into the mortgage backed securities business of the midd-2000s has turned up some problems.

If you think that the committee is designed to fail, these are good members to that end. If you think that the entire exercise is a ploy to cut entitlements and lessen small-d democratic accountability, you can see that at work here as well. In that sense, ultimately the specific members of the committee don’t really matter.

Wisconsin Democrats came up just short last night, flipping two seats in recall elections but not the three needed to take back the state Senate. Currently the Senate will have a 17-16 majority for Republicans; there are two recall elections against incumbent Democrats Robert Wirch and Jim Holperin next Tuesday, August 16. It’s possible that the disappointment of not reaching the goal number in the Republican recalls will depress Democratic turnout, but the expectation is that Wirch and Holperin will hold the seats.

On watching a 2009 clip of Obama, in which he talked about the importance of organized labor: “We have not heard that man for a long, long time.”

Indeed.

Once again the National Review comes forth to show its pride. It should have just kept its pants on.

Nat King Cole and Billy Preston — Blueberry Hill, from The Nat King Cole Show.

Michele Bachmann. Uh oh. In the New Yorker‘s August 15th Bachmann profile by Ryan Lizza, the presidential candidate proves herself to be way more intellectual than Sarah Palin.

Amid high but nit uniformly high turnout, voters took to the polls today in Wisconsin in six recall elections against Republican incumbents of the state Senate. The stakes are pretty simple: if Democrats manage to flip three of these seats, they take control of the Senate (provided they hold two incumbent seats in recall elections next week, as expected).

The S&P downgrade was intended to encourage political elites to focus on austerity at the expense of jobs and growth.

Riots have gripped London for the past three nights and, as communities move to clean up, there is increased tension and the possibility of more property damage.