The real bombshell of the past 24 hours in housing was the report of the FHFA Inspector General, the second in two weeks damning the conduct of the GSEs In this case, Fannie Mae was found to have known about foreclosure fraud, including serial fabrications of foreclosure documents and robo-signing, as far back as 2003.

When I first sat down in Sen. Jeff Merkley’s Washington office and asked about the #OccupyWallStreet protests, he immediately said, “Portland’s starting on Thursday!” I asked him if he’d go down to a protest? “It’s worth exploring. . . .The system is broken.”

Why 11 Democratic Senators and not 50 (all of them, less the three on the Super Committee) signed this effort spearheaded by Jeff Merkley is beyond me, but if more sign on it could be a crucial factor in actually pivoting away from deficit talk and toward jobs.

What a silly person this John Larson is, thinking that Congress would create a jobs supercommittee. Why, what would that have to do with the deficit?

In other words, the goal in Afghanistan is to attack safe havens in Pakistan. And that’s backed up by Spencer Ackerman’s reporting. There will be no movement of troops east, where the Taliban is dug in. Instead, the strategy will be “drones, drones, training Afghans, commando raids, and drones,” to quote Spencer. The mission has shifted to counter-terrorism, only with far more troops that you need for that mission (Sen. Coons didn’t see such a shift, but the refusal to go into the east is the tell). And the special ops forces, the JSOC guys, are being used to selectively take out Taliban to keep them at the negotiating table.

This is why the permanent bases are so important.

Make no mistake, not only did Sen. Wyden get this colloquy into the Senate record, but there appear to have been several threats hiding behind the Senate blather. DiFi has said she thinks the way to fix a secret law is to change it in a secret committee meeting. But Wyden et al have made it clear that if she doesn’t agree to fix it in her secret committee meeting, he will try to do so on the Senate floor.

The Senate will vote later today on a motion to proceed to S.1038 which would extend three expiring provisions of the Patriot Act for four years, with almost no debate.

UPDATE: The Senate passed cloture 74-8, so they’ll proceed to the bill. Final passage is expected Wednesday.

About a year ago, I appeared at Netroots Nation with Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), the Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim and Professor Elizabeth Warren on a panel called “The Forgotten Foreclosure Crisis.” Speaking with Merkley today, I remarked that we could hold the same panel again this year, without changing a word of it, and not be out of date in the slightest. Sen. Merkley agreed.

Let’s just say that the President’s energy security speech didn’t go over so well among the communities of interest.

I don’t know exactly what tomorrow’s meet-and-greet format will be, so I’m not sure how many chances I’ll get to ask questions of the Senator. But if you had a chance to ask a question tomorrow, what would you ask? I’ll try to get the answers and bring them back in a MyFDL post later this week.

Thanks, the floor is yours.