Libya is just another recent reminder that almost no one in Washington actually cares about the deficit. The deficit is only used as an excuse to justify forcing regular Americans to sacrifice.

Personally, given how stupid all three trade deals are, this is one time I would be perfectly happy to see the Republicans shoot the hostage, but I fear Obama will use this as an excuse to make a bad piece of legislation even worse.

How many times have you heard Democrats claim that “this moment” will be the magical opportunity when they convince the American people to like the new health care law? The newest “opportunity” to win the public over is apparently the House Republicans’ push for repeal.

Our long-term deficit problem is due basically to the incredibly high cost of health care if we fixed that we won’t have a long term deficit problem. The reason our health care costs so much is that Congress allows providers to engage in practices that rip off the public and the government. A great example is “pay for delay.” The government currently allows drug makers to directly pay other companies not to compete with them. Legislative efforts to put an end to this monopolistic practice appear dead according to the Hill.

The political disaster isn’t that Obama promised to end DADT, tried, and failed. He promised to end DADT, yet refuses to doing anything about it despite having the power. The real political disaster in his handling of DADT is that it has proven to an entire community that the president will promise action to one group, but do nothing to actually advance the cause — rendering all future promises suspect.

The number of contests close enough to watch continues to grow daily. Updates today on RI-01, CT-04, CT-05, IN-02, and NC-02.

There are several updates today thanks mainly to a new round of polling from The Hill newspaper. At the beginning of the week, I wrote of how remarkably competitive so many of these races remained so close to election day, and how many would break one way or another depending on the atmosphere this last week. With that in mind, the news is not good for Democrats.

The Hill has just become the most recent news outlet to find in their polling that a majority of voters want a viable third party as an alternative to the Republicans and Democrats. Their poll found that 54 percent of likely voters in 10 swing districts think there should be a third party. Their results mirror national polling from CNN (PDF) and Gallup, both of which also show majority support for a third party.

Many books about terrorism begin with a personal anecdote about where the author was on 9/11. Political Scientist Jocelyn Jones Evans was working on the Hill when the planes hit and changed the course of American national security policy.

“For the first and only time in my life,” she recalls, “I remember rolling down my windows to see and to hear the news for myself.”

One Nation Under Siege though, isn’t a book about policy. It’s a book about how 9/11 and its aftermath changed the culture of Congress, and how those changes have affected the work of government and the American people’s access to their own representatives. Drawing on dozens of interviews with Hill staff and legislators, Evans vividly depicts the impact of the threat of terrorism on congressional culture after 9/11 through a combination of narrative and political science.

A new batch of Congressional polling is out about Democratic freshmen, and it is not good news for Democrats.