The debate about Tasers has always been that they don’t do as much harm as a bullet. Too bad that is mostly marketing hype. When used on children and pregnant women they can be devastating.

President Obama announced that he would prefer FBI Director Robert Mueller to stay on for an additional two years beyond the 10-year term he has already served. Mueller, who became director of the FBI one week before 9-11, would see his term otherwise expire September 4.

Did I miss the open, public debate about whether we want the FBI–much less local police departments or “et cetera” using drones to spy on Americans’ activities?

This week, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) will hold long-awaited hearings in the House Homeland Security Committee on Muslim cooperation with law enforcement in terror investigations. King pretty much has his mind made up before entering the hearing room – he believes that Muslim-Americans haven’t aided enough in investigations against extremism, despite a long record to the contrary.

Scott Walker has been threatening public workers with layoff notices for a solid week, so another threat isn’t surprising. This time the deadline is tomorrow. Before it was last Friday. And then Tuesday.

So what is surprising? That there’s talk of compromise in the air.

If the election between Walker and Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett were held today, Barrett would win 52-45, mainly because Walker is losing Republican union voters

MADISON, WI (FDL) – While having dinner last night inside a building with a bank of windows facing the state house, we saw a coterie of hundreds of cops marching into the building. Once inside, they told the crowd assembled that they were ordered to kick the protesters out of the Capitol, but instead they’d be sleeping overnight with them.

The overhaul of collective bargaining in Ohio, much like Wisconsin, could put federal transportation money in jeopardy, costing the state much of its $171 million annual haul. So this hardly has anything to do with the budget. Instead, it’s part of a pattern of new right-wing governors taking advantage of their opportunities to force through ideological policy they have long sought.

Local law enforcement, including those who have come in from out of town to work at the Capitol, have been unfailingly nice, and supportive of the peaceful protests. Setting up the possibility of a situation with outside entities coming in to foment unrest has really rankled them.

The contrast between the NYT and the Guardian is instructive: the NYT sent over every cable they planned to publish. Whereas the Guardian refused to specify which cables they’d publish.

Under cover of off the record meetings with top national security officials, the NYT collaborated with the government, at the least on damage control, if not their investigation of WikiLeaks. The Guardian, by contrast, was unwilling to do more than warn State what general topics they’d cover on a day to day basis.