In a move that could be seen as election-year expedience, a friendly nod to the nuclear industry, or a sign of a coming battle with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), the Obama administration announced Thursday that it would nominate Kristine Svinicki for a second term on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Reid had gone public just a day earlier with his objections to Commissioner Svinicki getting another five-year appointment when her tenure expires at the end of June.

With Republicans, it’s always austerity for thee — not for me.

Apparently, it’s only “partisan” and a “witch hunt” when the targets of the investigation are Republicans.

There’s nothing wingnuts love more than meaningless political theater.

Funny how Republicans never get told, “Take it or leave it.”

Today, the House passed the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.” It provides $4.5B to badly underfunded child nutrition programs. And unsurprisingly, 153 Republicans voted against it — after repeatedly trying to kill it.

Firedoglake’s Jane Hamsher was on MSNBC’s/Lawrence O’Donnell’s Last Word show Wednesday night to push the President and Democratic Congressional leaders to show real leadership in the tax cut fight and not simply pretend to fight with meaningless votes they know they will lose.

A new DNC memo implies that voting for health care actually helped candidates. That is just stunningly dishonest.

Barney Frank was considered one of Cook’s “competitive races.” His district has a Democratic partisan voting index of +14, and Barney crushed his GOP opponent, 61-36. So no, it’s not really fair to compare what happened to Barney Frank to what happened to say, Chet Edwards in an R+20 district. Of the 53 Democrats who hailed from districts with a Republican partisan voting index of +1 or more, only three who voted for the health care bill survived: Joe Donnelly, Bill Owens and Nick Rahall.

Stephen Colbert Testifies at House Immigration Hearing.

Hey, remember last year when it seemed like everyone was repeating FDR’s “I agree with you. I want to do it. Now make me do it.” mantra to suggest that despite Obama’s apparent lack of enthusiasm for progressive policies, he simply needed us to push him so he’d have a pretext for doing the right thing?

How’d that work out for us?