I have been talking to numerous Hill offices trying to figure out what they’re hearing on the chaotic debt ceiling debate. Someone mentioned something last night that I found odd, so I’ve been calling around trying to confirm it. But basically, I can’t find anyone in the Senate or House who says the banks are whipping this.

Judd Gregg, you may remember, is the guy who said that an audit of the Federal Reserve represented “pandering to populism.” I guess he’s just pandering to profit. And it’s crazy. He has a net worth of between $2.5 million and $9.2 million. He isn’t starving and he’s 64 years old. He’s just a guy who has to be in the game of screwing the poor and cheating people, I guess. And he picked the perfect company to sign up with for that.

The Quitter gets absolutely savaged by Republican insiders in the GOP/Village Daily today.

As Glenn Greenwald explains today, we’ve had a good deal of official censorship of the Wikileaks cables, not just in the general sense with Joe Lieberman nudging the site off of Amazon’s cloud service, but in the particular. Several of the most sensitive revelations in not only this but a number of Wikileaks releases over the past year just don’t make it into American newspapers and news reports. He gives a sampling, but I want to focus on one: the State Department pressuring the Spanish government to stop investigations of torture and mistreatment by US nationals.

Liveblogging of the Senate Banking Committee hearing on foreclosure fraud continues. Senator Richard Shelby was actually pretty good, but then Sens. Mike Johanns and Bob Bennett went to some length to try to pretend the banksters weren’t doing what they were doing.

This hearing is the latest example of national policymakers getting involved in the foreclosure fraud issue. The Congressional Oversight Panel warning of the enormous risk from the failures of servicers was the first report of its kind at the federal level to take full measure of the situation, and this is the first Congressional hearing. Senators on the Democratic side like Jeff Merkley and Sherrod Brown are sure to press the bank representatives aggressively on why foreclosure mitigation programs have failed, and why they used false documents to evict people from their homes. The ranking member on the Republican side, Richard Shelby, wants to investigate failures at the major loan servicers.

Rivlin has waited for much of her professional life for this moment to cut Social Security benefits. Imagine if that was your life’s goal. You’d want to do or say anything to reach an agreement, too.

Speaking of believing lies more strongly, you have a host of deficit fanatics on Capitol Hill who cling to the deeply held belief that tax cuts create more revenue. At least, that’s the only explanation I can come up with for this lunacy.

Republicans are not happy with a mere 60-vote filibuster threshold and think their ability to obstruct legislation needs to be enhanced even more. Apparently, a year and a half of near-total gridlock has convinced Sen. Gregg that what our government really needs is even more ways for a minority party to bring legislating to a complete standstill. Republicans hate public programs so much they are prepared to subvert the clear Constitutional principle of majority rule in Congress to stop them.

President Obama has packed the Debt Commission (also known as the cat food commission) with members who have an overwhelming history of support for both benefit cuts and privatization of Social Security. The “National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform” is operating in secret over the objections of both parties. John Boehner and John Conyers [...]