Good thing the White House is taking the imminent government shutdown so seriously. President Obama designated Joe Biden as his lead negotiator with Congress on a long-term plan to set spending for the rest of the year. They had a meeting Thursday, and I’m not certain they followed up on Friday. And now, Biden’s headed to Russia, Finland and Moldova for a week.

From the very first reports of Raymond Davis’ killing of two Pakistanis and subsequent arrest, the insistence he was just a consular employee was obviously just polite fiction. The Guardian has stopped sustaining that fiction.

The fiction that Pakistan has nothing to do with our drone campaign depends on mutual trust and sustenance of the fiction. The ISI has to be willing to play its part. And it’s not clear everyone wants to play that game anymore.

The tense saga of Raymond Davis, who shot and killed two Pakistanis in Lahore on January 27, continues. His trial in Lahore has been delayed again, with the next hearing date addressing the question of diplomatic immunity now set for either March 3 or March 14, depending on which report you believe. On Wednesday, Senator John Kerry visited Pakistan to deliver yet another threat of Congress cutting off funding for Pakistan if Davis is not released. In the meantime, analysis of records for the “businesses” with which Davis is associated in the US raises the interesting question of whether he recruits potential spies among students taking courses in international security.

In a small reversal from comments earlier this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged for an end to violence in Egypt, though she made that statement about both the government and protesters. John Kerry, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made a similar statement, denouncing the government’s actions with tear gas and rubber bullets and Internet bans, but also encouraging the activists to “remember the lessons and legacy of peaceful protesters from Gandhi to Dr. King and to exercise their right to be heard in that tradition.” The curtain was lifted on the likely fear on the part of the US government due to concerns over the cost of oil.

What company wouldn’t want to have the government let it sell a product for whatever price it wanted, have the government use its power to stop anyone else from selling the product, and have the government directly or indirectly pay for buying the product?

The US has sustained more casualties this year that at any other time in the war. Civilian casualties, internal displacement and lack of access to medical treatment have grown, and remain huge challenges for those living under occupation. The US public has completely soured on the war, with 60% now believing it was not worth fighting.

Polling only eight points down in a Republican state in a Republican year, Alaska is not a bad place to be for no-name Democratic Senate candidate Scott McAdams.

I’m going to advance a theory that the political leadership in Washington has a plan to declare victory and get out of Afghanistan as surely as the Administration is doing in Iraq. Call it a hunch.

While Alan Grayson hides behind a belief that statutory law governing net neutrality would be safer from rollback than a change in classification at the FCC, John Kerry takes the realistic view, maintaining that the FCC’s power of regulation is the best if imperfect solution.

Robert Gates continued his anti-Wikileaks tour Sunday on ABC with Christiane Amanpour, calling Wikileaks “morally culpable” for the release of informant names and for releasing methods of US engagement in the field. Ahmed Rashid came on later and advised that these logs are years old, may include false names, and the informants named therein may have moved on. You can’t have it both ways. Either this is old news or it isn’t.