A court has ordered Glenn Mulcaire to disclose information on who gave him the order to hack the phones of Elle Macpherson and at least five other public individuals, including a Liberal Democrat deputy leader. The Guardian reports, “Mulcaire has lost an attempt to appeal against a court order obliging him to identify who instructed him to hack the phones, something he has resisted since February.” Mulcaire worked for News International and was jailed for phone hacking in 2007.

John Boehner’s demands on raising the debt limit, an action he has already pledged to take both publicly and privately on numerous occasions, are clearly ridiculous. They also have nothing to do with reducing debt, because the rigid stance against tax increases means that under his plan the budget would add $5 trillion to the debt over the next decade. The goal is to cut spending enough to pay for lower taxes for the rich, and that’s pretty much it.

So, it’s perhaps not worth pointing out that Boehner’s economic claims are ahistorical and fallacious. But Bloomberg does it anyway.

The House Democratic caucus is truly pathetic. They are, in fact, so pathetic that I’ve been forced to use a thesaurus to find new ways of describing their pathetic behavior: weak, impotent, pitiful, feeble and toothless. Last night, they again folded completely and passed the Senate’s version of the Obama-McConnell tax deal–as is–even though only a week earlier the House Democratic caucus voted to reject the deal.

We’ve seen this game of chicken play out over the past two years, with governors who appear far more ideologically committed than Walker and Ohio Governor-elect John Kasich. Rick Perry, Mark Sanford and even Sarah Palin all made rumblings about not accepting stimulus funds, and they all buckled in the end. Walker and Kasich appear sincere about killing the rail projects, but now that LaHood has told them that the money is “use it or lose it,” let’s watch and enjoy.

The stimulus actually proves the point that only job creation will balance the budget while contractionary measures won’t; more Democrats should be crowing about the stimulus, while insisting that more gets done. It’s a tricky two-step, but also a necessary one.

The President announced 66 nationwide broadband projects, as part of the Recovery Act, that will increase high-speed Internet access to, according to the press release “tens of millions of Americans and over 685,000 businesses, 900 healthcare facilities and 2,400 schools in all fifty states.” But the administration needs to get moving on these projects rather than dribbling them out.

After finding out what President Scott Brown is thinking with regards to financial reform, I’m sure you’re waiting with bated breath to hear his thoughts on unemployment insurance.

In the clearest indication yet that the White House believes the economy needs more stimulus to keep the recovery going, President Barack Obama sent a letter to the Congressional leadership of both parties, begging that they add into upcoming bills measures to keep poor people on their health insurance and aid struggling state and local budgets.

For one week, at least 200,000 out-of-work Americans have seen their jobless benefits expire, despite near double-digit unemployment and a growing number of people who have been unable to find a job for 27 weeks or more. The Congress recessed for two weeks without reaching agreement on an extension of those benefits, which has been historically customary during periods of high unemployment. In particular, Senate Republicans objected to a one-month extension, passed by the House, without offsets like spending cuts or paying for the extension using unspent stimulus money. And Democrats failed to file cloture early enough to get the extension done.

Obviously it hasn’t run through the legislative wringer yet, but the Local Jobs For America Act proposed by House Education and Labor Secretary George Miller looks like an exceedingly good piece of policy. It would provides through the community development block grant program $100 billion dollars to create local jobs through state and municipal budgets. Miller claims he could create or save a million jobs with that money.