I was away, but last night brought that rare species in Washington – an unexpected event. I fully expected the House to pass the extension of three key provisions of the Patriot Act, despite the 2/3 vote needed under suspension rules. But 26 Republicans broke with their party and, along with 122 Democrats, denied passage. [...]

At a threshold level, to prove their argument that something nefarious is afoot, they would need to start by dismissing other logical explanations for why this particular issue “suddenly rose to forefront.” Most obviously, they would need to dismiss the possibility that the opposition to gate grope rose so suddenly because the procedure at airport gates–the introduction of more RapeAScan machines and the related introduction of “enhanced pat-downs”–changed so suddenly.

Mica stepped up his criticism against John Pistole, the TSA Administrator, but he became one of the first prominent Republicans to basically take the side of the security state against the public.

To judge by his column in today’s Washington Post, Michael Gerson demonstrates a surprisingly poor grasp of the evangelical world. To say (as Gerson does) that evangelicals fear big government is laughable. They love big government — as long as they get to run it.

Over 25,000 ballots remain uncounted in the Alaska Republican primary for US Senate, where Tea Party candidate Joe Miller leads Sen. Lisa Murkowski by about 1,688 votes. That makes it at least possible for Murkowski to overtake Miller. Conflicting reports show that those uncounted ballots would either hurt or help Murkowski’s bid, depending on who you believe.

Rand Paul’s ambivalence (and by “ambivalence” I mean “antipathy until he realized he was getting killed politically”) towards Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, followed immediately by his “sometimes accidents happen” defense of BP against big neck-booting meanie Obama gave us a great reminder of the biggest of all of conservatism’s zombie big lies: The free market makes regulation unnecessary.

I was pretty surprised when the GOP threatened to pull Ron Paul’s committee appointments. They’re basically calling the Tea Parties a bunch of f&%king r#&!rds who can go Cheney themselves. The tea parties were formed around Paul’s anti-tax mantra and he is their spiritual godfather, though many who tout themselves as “leaders” don’t seem to know it. And he’s extraordinarily popular with their base right now — Paul won 31% of the presidential straw poll at CPAC, to Sarah Palin’s 9% and Mitt Romney’s 22%.

I would love to see the Republican Party try to remove the progenitor of the Tea Party movement from all his committees. They should really take a stand and do that, it’ll do wonders for the 2010 elections.

Implicit in the contemporary American health care system is a threat: Conform and spend your life behaving yourself in limited jobs or we will deny you insurance and put your health and your family’s future at risk.

With no place to go for refuge from corporatist entrenchment, populist opposition from the left and right will continue to have no choice but to work together in order to oppose it. No doubt the demonization for doing so from party loyalists on both sides who don’t want their control of the kleptocracy to be challenged will only get more fierce.