It’s a great development because, as we’ve seen with the pairing of David Boies and Ted Olson working together to make the conservative case for marriage equality in the courts, party affiliation should not matter on the legislative route.

Eric Schneiderman keeps picking up support in his quest to hold a real investigation on the criminal failures in mortgage securitization and servicing. He has the support of a number of newspaper editorial boards, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which devoted its Sunday editorial to an out-of-state Attorney General:

I guess some people tied to the anthrax case believe if you keep repeating the story, “Bruce Ivins stalked women, so he must have tried to kill Patrick Leahy” enough times, people will continue to believe it.

The whole case depends on the FBI’s contention that a flask Ivins had–RMR-1029–was “the murder weapon.” But in fact, the FBI only has proof that Ivins had what might be one of eight or more potential precursors to the murder weapon. Their efforts to equate the two ignore some interim steps about which they seem to have little evidence (and what they have they’re not examining very closely).

So let’s see. At some point during the anthrax attacks in 2001, USAMRID and AFIP decided to do anthrax tests on material from Flight 93. They purportedly found the hijackers tested positive for anthrax! But on second thought, FBI tells us, that positive result came from “lab contamination.” And then, presumably just after those tests, USAMRID and AFIP, perhaps working outside the chain of the official FBI investigation of anthrax, discover evidence implicating Iraq in the anthrax attacks. Results that, once again, further testing suggested was inaccurate.

A report from McClatchy provides important new evidence and analysis in the FBI’s Amerithrax investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks. The report shows that the FBI ignored as potentially erroneous a measurement of silicon in one anthrax sample and then hid this information from Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). Even more importantly, the high silicon measurements in at least two samples also were coupled with high tin measurements, opening up the possibility that silicon was added to the attack material in a form that is not mentioned in any of the FBI documents.

Significantly, it is virtually impossible that Bruce Ivins, whom the FBI has concluded acted on his own to carry out the attacks, would have been able to perform the necessary chemical manipulations involved in this treatment of the spores. Ivins likely also would not have had access to the necessary laboratory equipment to perform this treatment.

Today’s the day of Democrats calling for firings, I guess. On top of Tom Perriello wanting Tim Geithner to step down, Elaine Marshall, the Senate candidate who is close to even in polls against Republican incumbent Richard Burr in North Carolina, announced in a speech today that Alan Simpson should resign as co-chair of the deficit commission.

Jerold Nadler joins fellow Democratic members of Congress calling on President Obama to fire Alan Simpson from the Catfood Commission. But it’s not just Simpson. Rather, Simpson’s comments reflect the far deeper conflicts and illegitimacy of the commission itself. It’s a collaboration between corporate America, the executive branch and congress to create a body that will do something no politician wants to take responsibility for: cut Social Security benefits and drive seniors into poverty so that hedge fund billionaires like Pete Peterson won’t have to pay their taxes.

Sign the petition: Tell President Obama to Can the Catfood Commission

Chris Cillizza must have been the first one with his hand up in the Washington Post editorial meeting to volunteer to write the “Democrats in disarray” piece, about the Cordoba House project. He must have dialed with glee into all the campaigns and heard all the anguished responses. I particularly enjoyed the anonymous operative at the front of the article, who said, “Obama is right on substance but wrong on politics, and right now we need to focus on politics.”

Adam Schiff–a CA Democrat (!)–just filed a bill aiming to not only give prosecutors 4 days to question “terror suspects” before bringing them to court, but also expressing the will of Congress to let them delay Mirandizing suspects “as long as is necessary.”