The answers given by Attorney General Eric Holder during his appearance before the House Judiciary Committee this afternoon certainly make it appear like his decision to recuse himself was a gutless decision, one he made because he knew when the press discovered the Associated Press had their phone records secretly seized they would be collectively outraged.

Legislation sponsored by two members of the House of Representatives has been introduced to regulate how the government uses drones. The legislation would require law enforcement to get a search warrant or some other kind of judicial approval for surveillance before using drones to investigate criminal wrongdoing. It would, however, allow drone use for fire and rescue missions, monitoring droughts, assessing flood damage or chasing a fleeing criminal.

Zoe Lofgren (D-CA, @RepZoeLofgren) and Anna Eshoo (D-PhRMA, @RepAnnaEshoo) add their names to the list of members of Congress telling the FTC to abdicate their responsibility to oversee antitrust activity and just let Google do whatever the heck it wants.

In one of their last acts before going home to campaign, House Republicans will pass a bill today that would increase the level of high-skill immigrants allowed to stay in the country. It would expand by 55,000 the visas granted to foreign graduates of US colleges and universities in what are known as the STEM disciplines: science, technology, engineering and math. This fits with a key part of Mitt Romney’s immigration agenda, which he expressed in a roundtable on Univision last night. He said that any diploma to a foreign student for a high-skill field like this “should come with a green card.”

However, the Republican bill, authored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, would not create one new net immigration visa.

California’s efforts to create a better environment for foreclosure victims have begun to fade. $410 million from the foreclosure fraud settlement that was supposed to go into counseling and legal services was instead diverted to pay for a state budget shortfall. While this has angered the legal aid community, with the enormity of the budget problem in the state, it’s unlikely that will be reversed.

The markup in the House Judiciary Committee of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, has begun. Observers expect at least two days of markups, and the bill wouldn’t see the House floor until sometime thereafter, probably next year. There are over 60 amendments on the bill, and opponents on the committee are dragging out the proceedings. Rep. Zoe Lofgren refused to waive the reading of the bill, so Judiciary staffers needed to spend an hour doing that.

Understand that this bill is getting a hearing, and a markup, because very wealthy interests want it to pass. It so happens that very wealthy interests want it to fail, but that puts it on the agenda as well, because both sides can go to their funders and raise money off the threat of the bill passing or failing. This becomes a bonanza for K Street lobbyists. There are over 1,000 of them working on SOPA.

But here’s what was interesting. The Senate is now off for a week. When they come back it’ll be February 28. The continuing resolution to fund the government expires on March 4. So naturally, the Senate will next take up – a patent reform bill. And in the meantime, Reid is raising the pressure on John Boehner’s statement yesterday that he would not go for a short-term continuing resolution, which means a government shutdown, essentially.