Around the blogs today, there's a good deal of commentary, consternation, and near-confusion over the hallucinatory vision laid out today (and already memorialized in an online ad) by Mr. Double-Talk Express, John McCain, today: "By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won..."

This week's immigration raids in Iowa -- like similar raids elsewhere -- have made clear that right-wing talk about cracking down on employers is all just a lot of empty wank. So far, the chief employer involved in the raids, Agriprocessors Inc., has not been charged with anything, nor have the plant's managers or owners been rounded up like cattle and herded into detention centers. I wonder if this couldn't be because one of its top officials is a major donor to Republicans ...

The Marcia Blackburn Award for choking on your Republican talking points goes to... Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas). Brutal smackdown once again delivered by...Dave Obey.

Watch the video. May the force be with you.

In his new book, The Great Derangement, Matt chronicles his cross-country travels, and finds that, with distrust of the government at new heights and cynicism about the media and their role even higher, the country is “flipping out.”

Tim Shorrock's book, Spies for Hire, provides a necessary primer on the Intelligence-Industrial Complex. Shorrock's book shows that the push for telecom immunity is not just about shielding Bush and Cheney's legal wrong-doing, it's also about ensuring the growing, and increasingly seamless, relationship between our intelligence services and its contractors remains opaque to citizens.

In a historic ruling sure to resonate across the nation, the California Supreme Court today ruled that no citizens of California are second-class. In a 4-3 decision, the justices said the state's ban on same-sex marriage violates the "fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship."

A woman who spends years in medical school emerges to take her place alongside a panoply of male physicians—who, on average, make 38 percent more than she does. Female attorneys fare better—they make 30 percent less than their male counterparts. But it's not just a matter of higher pay for men in traditionally male occupations: Male registered nurses are paid 10 percent more than women—even though 90 percent of RNs are women.

In what looks to be the first step for Barack Obama to help Hillary Clinton pay off her campaign debt (without really saying that's what he's doing), both Obama and Clinton have signed a joint fundraising agreement with the DNC. McCain is doing much the same thing with the RNC and the "McCain Victory 08" fund, which was set up to skirt the intent of McCain/Feingold....

We need to ask ourselves, and our politicians, and anyone who will listen: when the banks get a bailout, why doesn’t it get passed along to the consumer?

Maybe it's just negotiating with Nazis that's the problem--making tons of dough by serving as their banker? The Bush family doesn't appear to have any problem with that.