Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson has released a letter that opposes giving a broad release to banks on foreclosure fraud in exchange for a quick settlement.

In the letter, Swanson writes that “the banks should not be released from liability for conduct that has not been investigated and is not appropriately remedied in any settlement.” Specifically, she refers to “liability for securities claims or conduct arising out of the securitization of mortgages or liability arising out of the use of the Mortgage Electronic Registry System (“MERS”), where those claims have not been investigated or fairly addressed through the settlement.” She adds that bank officers should not be released from criminal liability in a civil settlement.

President Obama’s reelection campaign chairman, Jim Messina recently told reporters that Obama supporters would be fine once the campaign explained all the Administration had accomplished. “No one is calling me up yelling,” he insisted.

That changed today.

Elizabeth Warren, the former Obama Administration official and Harvard law professor who created, fought to pass, and stood up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will formally announce her campaign for US Senate in Massachusetts tomorrow morning. Warren joins the field challenging Scott Brown, the Republican who succeeded Ted Kennedy after an upset win in January 2010.

Since January of 2009, when President Obama took office, the American people as a whole are noticeably worse off financially. This is a serious problem for the Obama campaign, and why they desperately need strong economic growth between now and the election.

It was only a matter of time that the Republicans’ newfound desire to lower the volume and not take hostages to achieve their aims would fall apart. We apparently have gotten through the FAA authorization extension, the surface transportation extension, and the debt limit vote without incident, but things are starting to break down. John Boehner is looking to hold back some reserve of funds for the FY 2012 budget, in order to force policy changes:

At this point it could be Angela Merkel and the European Central Bank that determine Obama’s electoral fate. For people in the White House, that shouldn’t be a reassuring thought.

Soufan, a long-time special agent working with the FBI, worked on some of the more notorious terrorist cases post-9/11, including the interrogation of Mohamed Al-Qahtani and Abu Zubaydah. According to Soufan, he was pulled off these interrogations when the CIA or military officials wanted to use torture on the detainees. In these cases, and it turns out others, Soufan and his colleagues were pulled out of interrogations at the behest of the Bush administration or the CIA.

As I mentioned a few days ago, the Secessionist has a big problem with GOP primary voters: his reasonable stance on immigration. And his opponents went after him hard about it last night.

Wonderful, stupendous, long-overdue news if true.

Everyone’s talking about this exchange from last night’s CNN/Tea Party Express debate (I assume the CNN/MoveOn debate is next week), where the crowd cheers the prospect of allowing an uninsured man to die. And I’ll get to that in a moment. But perhaps just as rotten was when the crowd booed Ron Paul, who’s supposed to be a kind of Tea Party godfather, for daring to suggest that not every Muslim is responsible for 9-11. Beyond the crassness of this incident, it should definitively end the speculation that the Tea Party is anything other than an outgrowth of the Republican Party.