Last Friday in an attempt to be the first large population state with a primary, Florida broke the Republican Party’s primary rules by moving up its primary date to January 31. This power play by Florida is expected to cause Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina to all move their primary dates even earlier to maintain their early state influence. That leaves little time for undeclared candidates to get in or risk missing the train.

The way the Republican Party keeps shuffling through front-runners for its 2012 presidential nomination, you almost start to wonder if these folks aren’t firm advocates of recycling after all.

Disposability is certainly something they have down pat.

Because of threats from the President Obama’s Department of Justice, Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee (I) has finally decided not to let the state license its three planned medical marijuana dispensaries.

Well it appears that the latest attempt to draft a prospective Republican candidate has run aground. Chris Christie and his hip-waders are staying in New Jersey.

The fight over whether to offset emergency spending on disaster relief, as Eric Cantor wants, could end up being the most interesting upcoming battle in Congress. The lines aren’t drawn in an entirely partisan way on this one. In particular, Republican Governors in the states affected want to see that disaster relief, and don’t care about offsets.

Their irresponsible position is that corporations and billionaires should not have to share the sacrifices needed to keep our economy on track for recovery. That is why they vehemently oppose efforts to cut corporate welfare and to eliminate subsidies for the oil companies. Unlike most Americans, who believe we should pull together to find real solutions, these politicians are intent on dividing Americans by destroying programs that have broad public support. At the same time, they have done all in their power to create instability in the economy and put more Americans out of work.

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.

When President Obama said that he would not go after state level medical marijuana dispensaries, we took it as a pledge. Too bad his Attorney General does not seem to take presidential promises very seriously.

I dunno why so many people are acting so weird about that picture that wound up on Mr. Weiner’s Bookfaced site or Witter or whatever it was. Funny, when Mr. Vitter’s nanny talked about how he still wuvvvs wearing diapers, the WaPo didn’t invite Chris Lehane to spend a few hours talking to people online about it.

Chris Christie, New Jersey’s increasingly unpopular right-wing governor, is a big believer in small government and austerity. Just not for him.