The close call in the House Budget Committee for the Ryan budget led many to wonder whether the House leadership would have trouble with the bill on the floor. But The Hill reports that they’re making progress toward that goal.

Paul Ryan sped into action with his 2013 budget resolution. After releasing it on a Tuesday, he put it up for a vote in the Budget Committee on a Wednesday. This should have been immediately unacceptable to the other 37 members of the Budget Committee who allegedly have a function in crafting the budget. But they allowed the vote nonetheless. What’s surprising is that it only passed by one vote.

A very big meeting will take place today between House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and conservative members of the House Budget Committee, over the budget for the next fiscal year.

Why has no one ever thought of this before?

I guess it all depends on how you look at it…

Bush II chief economist and CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin attacking the millionaires tax:

No wonder the modern GOP hates science…it makes sense.

The story from Evan McMorris-Santoro here, about conservatives turning up their nose and saying “Meh” to the upcoming Marianne Gingrich revelations, even the open marriage stuff, is completely anecdotal. But it fits with a general story about redemption that conservative Christians often tell themselves to allow for a candidate who fails them morally but still offers them low taxes and a strong national defense.

Hey, you know what conservatives really really hate? Conservatives just can’t stand it when rich people and corporations use their vast wealth to game the system! Just don’t ask them to support any kind of public campaign financing or limits on corporate political spending…

In the most recent Canadian elections, the Liberal Party of Canada, one of the oldest and most dominant political parties in the world, lost badly and fell into irrelevance. That fall, however, may lead the country to adopt more democratic election reforms, and Canada could serve as a case study for how to do it.

The Liberal Party of Canada, the country’s oldest federally registered party, has endorsed a resolution calling for the legalization and regulation of marijuana in Canada. This would be roughly equivalent in the US to the Democratic national convention adopting a non-binding resolution in favor of marijuana legalization.