Yesterday in 100 Seconds: Papal Friday

Has Krauthammer been driven off the deep end by his hatred of Obama. Jacob Heilbrunn peruses the evidence.

David Brooks describes how an unnamed GOP senator fondled Brooks' well-rounded thigh.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

The latest GOP angle on attacking Obama's health care reform effort. Say we never should have founded Medicare.

I never fail to be amazed and amused that many right-wingers and Palinatics genuinely believe that everyone who thinks Palin is a grifter or a clown is actually afraid of her. As in when Bill Kristol recently wrote that Palin's critics "tend not only to dislike and disdain Palin, they also want to bury her chances now as a presidential possibility. What are they so scared of?"

Read more »

Is Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) running for the Senate in 2010 or not?

Spencer Ackerman is plowing through the joint IGs' report on domestic surveillance that was just released. Among the conclusions he's finding in the report: most leads secured by the secret surveillance program were determined not to have any connection to terrorism and -- surprise!--then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' July 2007 testimony to Congress about the surveillance program was "confusing, inaccurate, and ... had the effect of misleading."

In addition to detailing how the White House (read: Cheney) basically turned John Yoo into a one-man OLC, the report also explains how the White House (Cheney again?) directed the CIA to provide the factual underpinnings to the President's "legal" authorizations. Again no surprise, but let's note for the record that this whole operation was run from the very top.

Late Update: Another aspect of this also has Cheney's fingerprints all over it: Once DOJ began objecting to the program (that is, once anyone beyond Yoo at DOJ learned of it), those objections were kept from President Bush by White House staff, at least according to Bush.

In an interview with TPMDC, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) says a number of Democrats, himself included, would have "great difficulty" voting for a health care reform bill without a public option.

Slideshow: The Obamas meet the Pope

We've had to go back and revise and extend our comprehensive timeline of Les Affaires Ensign to account for all the new revelations.

There's one thing that Sarah Palin and Roland Burris can agree on. Watch.

TPM Reader BD:

Remember how during the 2008 campaign a lot of people suggested that Obama could prove to be an excellent role model for African-American men who have often been deemed less than responsible as husbands and fathers? Wouldn't it be great if white Evangelical Republican men could come up with a role model like that too?

A neighbor of the Dem donor whose fundraiser was raided by the San Diego sheriff wants to make sure everyone knows she didn't make the derogatory comments about gays and call police about the event: "We're liberal Democrats -- we have a Buddha on our table."

Bush Administration domestic surveillance programs much broader than previously known. Spencer Ackerman has more. Here's the joint report from the inspectors general.

We're going through the report now, but for a frame of reference let me refer you back to this TPMmuckraker report by Paul Kiel and Spencer Ackerman from two Julys ago. I dare say we were on to something.

Late Update: Fair question from a reader:

Confused, could you clarify-- I've been seeing headlines at TPM and elsewhere for a couple weeks saying things something like "CIA report delayed, AGAIN". Is the IG report with the revelations of previously unknown Bush lawbreaking that you're currently flashing the "breaking" notice for the same one that people were recently upset about the failure to release? Or is there ANOTHER report of this sort with yet more revelations still pending?

The report released today was compiled at the request (demand, really) of Congress by the IGs of the various entities that make up the intelligence community. This is a different report from the still-classified 2004 CIA report on the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of torture whose release has been delayed several times and is still pending.

Senate Republicans have quite the line up of opposition witnesses set to go next week during the Sotomayor confirmation hearings, including Frank Ricci, the New Haven firefighter who just won his reverse discrimination case after taking it all the way to the Supreme Court.

What I didn't know is that, as Brian Beutler explains at TPMDC, Ricci landed a job with the fire department back in 1997 as part of a settlement of his own regular old discrimination suit (he has dyslexia). Not exactly the guy you would expect the GOP to make a poster boy for all of us "oppressed" white men.

Our latest Obama White House slideshow.

Yes, I know that's pretty bold billing given the recent news out about Sen. Ensign (R-NV). But beyond all the salacious detail there's a picture emerging of the man -- who, remember, is a high-profile senator and had been considered a serious presidential candidate -- that combines deeply manipulative traits with an almost childlike approach to those in authority around him.

Ensign is a member of something called the C Street group, which is part of a highly secretive religious outfit called 'The Family'. It's a combo religious fellowship and Capitol Hill group home where a number of Republican members of Congress live. And it's run by a guy named Doug Coe. (Because the comedy never stops, remember that Gov. Sanford too is a member of the C Street group/Family.) In one of the more surreal episodes in this whole drama, while folks from 'The Family', including Sen. Coburn (R-OK), were trying to get Ensign to end his relationship with the girlfriend and write her and her husband a big check.

So Ensign agrees to do this. But the members of his fellowship had so little trust he could follow through that they had him write out a letter to the mistress that he was ending the relationship and then drove him to the local Fedex office to make sure he actually dropped the letter in the box. So he does that. But then after he shakes them loos he calls the mistress to tell her his friends made him write the letter and to ignore it.

It makes having his parents pay the couple off sound far less out of character.

And this was a man who was going to run for president.

The President this morning: "I want to be very careful -- Africa is a continent, not a country."

Pawlenty trails Obama by double digits in his own state.

On GMA this morning, they dissected the video of the G-8 moment that yielded the Obama photo which right-wing sites like Drudge had such a field day with yesterday. You be the judge.

Read the House Blue Dogs' letter to Speaker Pelosi and Steny Hoyer which prompted the delay in publicly rolling out of the draft health care reform bill.

At a presser this morning in Italy, Obama said of the world economic crisis: "full recovery is still a ways off." That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Through all the legislative ins and outs on health care over recent weeks, one pattern keeps standing out to us. Each time the 'public option' looks like it's getting marginalized on the leftward side of the policy equation, it's Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), through a mix of his rep for 'centrism' and perceived political canniness, who pushes it back to the center of the debate as something that will be in the final bill, with some pointed public comment.

Yesterday in 100 Seconds: Viagra and Candy

Reich: When will the recovery begin? Never.

On the 10th anniversary of a student uprising, anti-government demonstrators took to the streets again in Tehran today where they were met by riot police. Pictures.

There's a lot of salacious back and forth today about the Ensign scandal. But beneath the tabloid headlines there's a critical question that needs to be asked:

Which is more emasculating? Getting paid a hundred grand by the guy who screwed your wife? Or being a fifty-something United States senator and still needing mom and dad to cut the check to pay off your mistress and her husband?

Thoughts?

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) lashed out at reporters on Capitol Hill who were asking him questions about his role in the Ensign affair:

You've got two families that are back together and you guys are going to help tear them apart. What do you think their kids think about what you're writing right now? You're helping tear two families apart that are back together. You need to quit. It's all manipulation.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is expected to name Republican voter-suppression guru Hans Von Spakovsky to the State Advisory Committee for Virginia, a volunteer board that advises the commission. Zack Roth reports.

From TPM Reader TO ...

I had a quick thought about the new Ensign revelations that I found amusing.

So first there was John Ensign with his affair. Shortly thereafter, Mark Sanford steps up to take the spotlight with his affair (and did he ever take the spotlight, with comments about true love and tragic love stories) Now John Ensign counters with some extra added financial impropriety to spice up his indiscretion.

I can't wait to see what Sanford does next to one up Ensign.

We've known for a while that Sen. Ensign (R-NV) gave a 'severance' payment of at least $25,000 to his ex-mistress and her husband. Now it turns out it was $96,000. But it gets better. Ensign's lawyer is pointing out that he didn't pay any money -- his parents paid them off.

More pictures of the Obamas as they mix and mingle in Italy.

Sen. Coburn (R-OK) is moving quickly to walk back earlier statements from his staff that appeared to concede that Coburn had advised Sen. Ensign (R-NV) to pay off his mistress and her husband. Here's the latest.

Now that Sen. Coburn (R-OK) has said he will not answer any questions about his conversations with Sen. Ensign (R-NV) because he was acting as his physician (and spiritual counselor), TPM Reader DE reminds us that Dr. Coburn is an OB/Gyn.

A deeper scandal than we'd ever imagined?

I'm a little curious why this is not getting more attention. We've known since last month that Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) admitted to an affair with a former senate staffer and claimed that the woman's husband had tried to extort money from him to keep the affair secret. That we know about.

But now it appears that Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) may have urged Ensign to pay the woman and her husband off to literally and figuratively get out of town.

As Zack Roth explains here, this is the claim made last night by Doug Hampton, the cuckolded husband. Yesterday Coburn and his representatives would not deny the claim and actually seemed to concede that he had urged Ensign to pay the Hamptons money. To the Politico, Coburn's spokesman John Hart "categorically" denied Hampton's claim but seemed to be pegging the denial to the dollar amount not to the general issue of advising him to pay money. (See the quotes in Zack's post and judge for yourself whether it amounted to an admission.) In one extra piece of humor, Hampton refers to the money as 'restitution.'

But now -- just since I started writing this post -- Coburn has come out with a new line entirely. Now he's categorically denying urging Ensign to pay any money at all. And now -- and here's the kicker -- Coburn is saying that he won't answer questions about this from the Ethics Committee or anyone else because his conversations with Ensign are constitutionally protected since he was providing counseling as a physician and a Church deacon.

People outside Louisiana marveled that former Rep. "Dollar" Bill Jefferson (D-LA) could get re-elected in 2006 even after he was indicted and accused of hiding $90,000 in bribes in the freezer in his house. But to anyone from Louisiana, it was pretty typical. Taking your share of the pie is accepted, even expected. (Jefferson was eventually defeated in 2008.)

But what we didn't know then and what would probably have ended Jefferson's political career immediately was another thing he kept in that freezer of his: veggie burgers. The incriminating evidence emerged yesterday in Jefferson's corruption trial (we have more pictures here):

Read more »

Remember last week we learned that that goofball deputy from San Diego County Sheriff's Department had flipped out at that small Democratic fundraiser hosted at a home in the suburbs, spraying pepper spray into people's eyes, throwing people to the ground and calling in a fleet of police cars, a canine unit and even a police helicopter. And we got to thinking, are these guys in the habit of flipping out like this? Sending in the helicopter at a moment's notice, like an underutilized toy?

That was a bit hard to figure out. But we did find out that the Department's website has a special section devoted to para-militaryish photos of its helicopter force, with even some beef-cakish photos of the pilots with assault rifles ... I guess ready for some local community policing. Shocking these guys would fly off the handle. Take a look.

Norm Coleman's fave-unfave: 38% to 52%.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) says the US under Obama is like Germany under the Nazis.

Is Bibi Netanyahu really going around railing against President Obama's chief of staff and head political advisor "self-hating Jews."

You know how honoring the role of the slaves who helped build this country is an attack on America's Christian heritage?

Me neither.

But Rep. Steve King (R-IA) does.

Jeb Bush on the current state of the GOP: "This should be our time. But it isn't, is it?" That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Yesterday in 100 Seconds: The Greatest Wealth is Health

Sarah Palin, says David Frum, "quit to cash in. Her admirers can excuse anything, but to the much larger audience of non-admirers, Palin will look a lot like those CEOs who wrecked their banks and the national economy while accepting huge bonuses for themselves personally. John McCain's slogan in 2008 was "Country First." Palin's in 2012? "I seen my opportunities, and I took 'em."

I said when this first came down the pike that it seemed far the most likely conclusion, since the bow-out was so obviously rushed, that Palin was resigning ahead of some big scandal coming down the pike. But I confess that now I'm not so certain of my initial judgment.

Palin of course has tons of scandals. But if a game changer was on the way, one she had to drop out of sight so quickly for, I think we'd have heard something about it by now. And she's hardly dropped out of sight. Not that I'm counting out the possibility by any means. I'm just not so sure.

Maybe it really was just that she suddenly got tired of the accountability thing. Or couldn't wait the eighteen months left on her contract to start shoveling up the dollars.

As I think a number of others have said, I've always thought Palin's character was essentially that of a grifter. And when these folks blow out of town after a con has run its course, it's usually a pretty hasty exit.

So maybe it all makes sense.

I haven't been closely following this budding controversy over the photos by Edgar Martins that appeared in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, but I think that's because what coverage I have seen underplays the seriousness of the issue by referring to "digitally altered" photographs. In fact, that's how the Times itself phrased it when they took the photos down pending further review (suspicions were apparently first raised by a commenter at MetaFilter). When I hear digitally altered, I think of the usual ethical dust-ups over filters, brushing up details, or removing inconvenient obstructions in the line of sight.

But it turns out that in fact the images weren't merely altered, they were digitally composed. Elements of the images were real photos, but the photos were manipulated in such a way that the final product was not in fact a reproduction of an image that an observer would be able to see in real life. Artistically, they were compelling, as you can see here. Journalistically they were fakes. And The Times has now admitted as much in a new "Editor's Note" published today:

A picture essay in The Times Magazine on Sunday and an expanded slide show on NYTimes.com entitled "Ruins of the Second Gilded Age" showed large housing construction projects across the United States that came to a halt, often half-finished, when the housing market collapsed. The introduction said that the photographer, a freelancer based in Bedford, England, "creates his images with long exposures but without digital manipulation."

A reader, however, discovered on close examination that one of the pictures was digitally altered, apparently for aesthetic reasons. Editors later confronted the photographer and determined that most of the images did not wholly reflect the reality they purported to show. Had the editors known that the photographs had been digitally manipulated, they would not have published the picture essay, which has been removed from NYTimes.com.

The Minnesota GOP has cut a check to Al Franken for $95,000 to partially reimburse him for defending the election contest under the state's loser pays law.

Coburn spokesman John Hart tells Politico:

Dr. Coburn did everything he could to encourage Senator Ensign to end his affair and to persuade Senator Ensign to repair the damage he had caused to his own marriage and the Hampton's marriage. Had Senator Ensign followed Dr. Coburn's advice, this episode would have ended, and been made public, long ago.

Ouch.

Zack Roth has more on the latest in Les Affaires Ensign, including a severance payment of more than $25,000 to love interest Cindy Hampton from Sen. Ensign personally.

We've gotten an explanation from Rep. Steve King (R-IA) for why he was the lone vote against acknowledging the role of slaves in building the U.S. Capitol. He did it to protest "a several year effort by liberals in Congress to scrub references to America's Christian heritage from our nation's Capitol":

Our Judeo-Christian heritage is an essential foundation stone of our great nation and should not be held hostage to yet another effort to place guilt on future Americans for the sins of some of their ancestors.

So there you have it.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

From Bloomberg (thanks to TPM Reader PJ for the catch):

Morgan Stanley plans to repackage a downgraded collateralized debt obligation backed by leveraged loans into new securities with AAA ratings in the first transaction of its kind, said two people familiar with the sale. ...

Two years after the credit markets began to seize up, costing the world's biggest financial institutions $1.47 trillion in writedowns and losses, banks are again taking so- called structured finance securities and turning them into new debt investments with top credit ratings. While the Morgan Stanley deal is the first to involve CDOs of loans, banks have been doing the same with commercial mortgage-backed securities in recent weeks.

I'd love for someone to explain why this isn't the same old game of financial alchemy -- turning toxic crap into AAA gold with the wave of a wand -- that helped precipitate the financial crisis. Anyone?

For a while there, even up to a week ago, it looked like all the momentum was away from a public option plan for health care. But that ebb seems to have stopped, and there are signs that the momentum may be flowing back in the other direction now. For example, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) is edging towards being more supportive of the idea after earlier skepticism.

Looks like Sen. John Ensign is in for a rough couple of days. His former staffer and buddy -- the one whose wife Ensign had an affair with -- has done a two-part interview for a local TV show scheduled to run tonight and tomorrow night. The Las Vegas Sun has a preview of the interview, Doug Hampton's first since Ensign admitted to the affair:

Hampton said the affair began while his family was staying at the Ensign home. Hampton said his family's house was broken into just before Christmas 2007, at which time the Ensigns invited the Hamptons to stay with them in a nearby Summerlin neighborhood. ...

Hampton discovered the affair when he saw an incriminating text message, he said.

The families confronted the issue in full on Christmas Eve.

Still, Hampton said, Ensign continued to pursue Cynthia Hampton with text messages and phone calls. ...

Hampton said he reached out to intermediaries involved in a Christian fellowship home in Washington, D.C., where Ensign and several other powerful Washington figures live.

The group, including Coburn, a well-known conservative, confronted Ensign and suggested that the Hamptons needed to be given financial assistance -- in the millions of dollars -- to pay off their $1 million-plus mortgage and move them to a new life away from Ensign.

The Sun also obtained a copy of a painfully awkward handwritten letter from Ensign to Cindy Hampton trying to end the affair.

Shots of the Obamas rubbing elbows with the G-8 crowd in Italy.

All those ethics complaints that were paralyzing Sarah Palin and forced her to resign as governor? Well, there were only three complains still pending when she announced her resignation plans.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC): Sonia Sotomayor has temperament and character problems, but "I honestly think I could vote for her."

Who would vote against officially recognizing the contributions of slaves in the construction of the U.S. Capitol? Only one man: Rep. Steve King (R-IA).

Alberto Gonzales won't just be teaching a poli sci class next semester at Texas Tech, he'll also be "recruiting and retaining first generation and underrepresented students" as well as planning a leadership training program for them. What a role model.

We told you last week about this bizarre incident in which an anti-gay heckler screamed taunts at a Democratic fundraiser at a home in suburban San Diego and then called in a noise complaint that led to a crowd of middle aged Dems being pepper-sprayed and two carted off to jail -- with a canine unit, more than a half a dozen police cars and a helicopter called in to boot.

So why did junior law man Marshall G. Abbott flip out and start shooting pepper spray in peoples' eyes and call reinforcements like he was involved in some sort of gang shoot out?

According to the preliminary report, he felt 'threatened' by the small crowd of middle- and retirement aged Democrats at the fundraiser and whipped out the pepper spray. All I can say is, thank God this doofus didn't reach for his gun. He reported also suffering "several scratches and minor swelling on both of his arms." But presumably he could have gotten those while throwing the hosts to the floor in restraint holds to place them under arrest.

With Karl Rove having finally been deposed, where does Congress' US attorneys probe go from here?

Behold, Al Franken's swearing in ... in pictures.

Majority Leader Harry Reid is threatening to lower the boom on members of his caucus to vote with the leadership on key procedural matters, i.e., cloture. But conservative Dems like Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu are already balking.

So far Arlen Specter has been a more reliable Democratic vote than he was Republican vote before his party switch (though it's admittedly a still small sample). That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Yesterday in 100 Seconds: Finding Peace

At long last Karl Rove faced congressional investigators today in the U.S. attorneys firings and related investigations of the politicization of the Bush-era Justice Department. He was deposed by House Judiciary Committee attorneys for most of the day, committee chairman John Conyers tells Politico.

We were looking back at pre-election funny Al Franken today, since it seems like we're in for at least a significant period of new boring Al. And I was reminded of this moment of old Funny Al terrorizing my dog Simon. Great days, great days ...

From a knowledgeable source on the Hill ...

Now that they have 60, Reid and Durbin need to remind Dem members that when your Leader files cloture, you support him. If you want political cover, vote against final passage. Fine. But opposing cloture means you're supporting a filibuster of your party's agenda.

From what I hear, they started delivering that message, if a softer version of it, earlier today.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) says the military coup in Honduras is kind of like the election of Al Franken in Minnesota.

Alberto Gonzales lines up teaching gig for the fall.

Late Update: TPM Reader RS:

Please tell me there's at least one Texas Tech political science student with the guts to answer "I do not recall" to every test question. Maybe even "I do not recall remembering."

As the report I link above notes, Gonzo will be "teaching a 'special topics' course on contemporary issues in the executive branch."

WSJ liveblogging the Michael Jackson memorial live blogs.

The practical realities of politics have forced Al Franken to tone down the funny. So we remember the earlier Al Franken -- from the Mick Jagger impersonation to the early Letterman appearances to SNL.

Late Update: I'll add on my own account, painfully, he hasn't just toned down the funny. The post-recount Al has been painfully bland in his statements and frighteningly monotone in his vocal stylings. This new dude's pretty boring. So, to the funny Al of yesteryear, we salute you! - jmm

Huffpo hires Froomkin. An excellent pick up, taking good advantage of WaPo's ... well, poor staffing choices.

Vice President Biden in his role as President of the Senate is now swearing in Al Franken.

Nice touch: Franken was escorted into the Senate chamber by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and former Vice President Walter Mondale, also of Minnesota.

An extended round of applause for Franken from the Senate and if the volume level is any guide from the Senate gallery, too.

Watch.

Sarah Palin's rambling and incoherent late Friday (east coast time) announcement went so poorly that she invited the networks out for a series of follow-up interviews that were taped yesterday and run this morning. We've pulled the highlights (she's in waders). Watch.

Late Update: TPM Reader RF feeling snarky today:

It's so inspiring to watch Sarah sacrificing herself so she can go fishing with her family. I bet this is exactly what JFK meant when he asked us what we could do for our country. I wish I could be so selfless. I mean, this is even more awe inspiring than President Bush giving up golf.

Come to think of it, this is about par for the course for Republicans sacrificing for the greater good. Remember Mitt's kids foregoing serving in the military to sacrifice themselves by driving around with their dad campaigning? Rush Limbaugh is sacrificing by giving up his addiction to illegal pain pills.

If you want to have some fun with it, you could easily put together a 'Top Ten Sacrifices' list!

I mentioned yesterday the GOP's deep need to portray Al Franken as a raving madman. Another good example today as the NRSC for the second time takes a funny Franken impersonation of the late Paul Wellstone out of context and cuts the video to make it look like Franken is unhinged.

Late Update: The duplicity knows no bounds! The NRSC has responded to criticism of this latest misleading video and in its defense says it could have used a much worse image of Franken, one of him in diapers. But that photo, as we reported yesterday, has already been repeatedly shown to be doctored and not a real image of Franken. So, yes, they could have used another fake to make their bogus point.

Later Update: The NRSC now says, hey, don't blame us, we simply referred reporters to a link from the LA Times. "You'll note the link is to the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest newspapers in the country - if there's a question about the authenticity of the photo, you should direct your question to the LA Times," a NRSC flack tells us.

The saddest part of this, really, given the dismal shape of the Republican Party, is that these guys think this is truly clever. They're even smug about it.

Atlantic Media publisher David Bradley responds to our report on the corporate-sponsored, off-the-record salons his company has been hosting for years -- but which had escaped scrutiny until the Washington Post got busted for preparing to launch a very similar series of events:

Further, and this is a modest brag, I think I'm well suited to convening intelligent, committed people across wide divides. There are leadership gifts that I would prefer, but my lot includes a big measure of listening and deference to others' views.

In a lengthy defense of the salons posted at Atlantic Media's Hotline, Bradley concedes that, like Post publisher Katharine Weymouth, he had not previously reviewed the marketing materials for the events: "I don't believe ours are egregious but I now know they do not all reflect the central fact of our conversations - dialogue and debate, without the advance of a particular interest." Zack Roth has more.

The rebuke by the governor's own party stopped short of a call for his resignation.

At long last, Al Franken is sworn in as a U.S. senator today. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Palin: Politically speaking, "If I die, I die."

Yesterday in 100 Seconds: Nothing More Mavericky

Been a rough couple years for governors.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Me today, me tomorrah, me forevah!

Sanford remains defiant, refuses to resign.

The National Review's new cover features "Dr. Obama" slipping on a latex glove.

TPM Reader KM:

I'm sweltering down here in Houston and reflecting that it wasn't so long ago that Texas had the looniest governor in the nation. My how the bar has been raised.

Palin's attorney: Her resignation is "really a form of self-sacrifice."

The transformation from comedian to senator is complete. Harry Reid and Al Franken held a presser this morning, and Franken, who will be sworn in tomorrow, came off as the more serious and sober of the two (Watch).

It's going to take some time being measured and monotone to put to rest his image as a rowdy bombthrower (which is both embraced and reviled by the right -- take, for example, this fake photo of Franken still making the rounds and being passed off as legit). Somewhere between the obnoxious Franken and the straight-arrow Minnesotan is a truly witty guy. I look forward to it being safe for that Franken to emerge.

Are Republicans losing control of the tea-bagging movement? That's what it looked like in Texas this weekend -- and possibly around the country as well.

The public life of Robert S. McNamara in pictures.

Let me start by saying I don't think this is likely. But given our experience with Larry Craig, I do think it's worth considering. Remember, former Sen. Larry Craig came out and announced he was resigning his office. But folks who listened closely noticed that he only announced his 'intent to resign'. And later he decided that his 'intent' had changed and he wouldn't resign after all. He ended up serving right through the last day of his term in January 2009.

Now, Palin's situation is different in as much as Craig was under great pressure to resign and the 'intend to' workaround ended up just buying him time. Palin did this totally out of the blue. But given the thundering derision that has greeted her decision and exposure as a quitter of gargantuan proportions, is it possible she'll reconsider? After all, if she's resigning, why doesn't she just resign? Why wait until the end of July?

Again, I don't think it's likely. And I can't fathom a scenario in which it was planned all along. But remember we're dealing with a deeply erratic and probably mentally unstable person who does lots of completely whacked things at the drop of a hat. So it's hard to figure that three weeks isn't plenty of time for her to reconsider. It might even be enough time for her to un-resign and decide to re-resign all over again in time for the deadline.

After an unexpected and clearly hastily organized resignation announcement Friday, the political question on everyone's mind these days is what is going on in the world of Sarah Palin? We search for answers in today's Sunday Show Roundup ...

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) denounces round the clock coverage of "pervert" "low-life" "pedophile" Michael Jackson.

At 10:30 this morning at the Hart Senate Office Building, a maintenance crew assigned by the Architect of the Capitol will install the official nameplate outside of Sen. Franken's new office.

All you TPMers up there, head over with your digital cameras!

Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) launches his "I'm Coming After You, Arlen" tour of Pennsylvania.

The FBI takes the unusual step of publicly declaring that Sarah Palin is not under investigation. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

The secretary of defense to JFK and LBJ was 93.

Sarah Palin's decision to quit her job as governor was so long planned that her father-in-law was shocked to hear the news -- which he got as an email news alert on his cell phone.

Latest Twitter comment from Gov. Palin ...

Critics are spinning, so hang in there as they feed false info on the right decision made as I enter last yr in office to not run again....

"Halfway through her first term as Alaska's Governor, Sarah Palin has done so much for her state and her nation ... Still, there is much left to be done, so let's help Governor Palin continue the job she was elected to do without all these petty distractions."

From the presumably soon-to-be-revised 'About' page at the Sarah Palin Legal Expense Fund website. (Thanks to TPM Reader AL for the tip.)

I'm reading Philip Rucker's Washington Post piece on Sarah Palin's decision to resign her governorship. Supposedly, personal attacks, particularly attacks on her children, played a major role in her decision to step down. But can we still bring up the fact that most of the supposed 'attacks' on Palin's family and children were self-generated efforts to use her children to garner more publicity and keep herself in the spotlight? The infamously silly Letterman incident being only the most recent example?

Please?

Late Update: A very good point from TPM Reader RW ...

It is shocking that a paragraph like this could appear in one of the nation's 2 major newspapers (from the Washington Post):

Yet Palin's vulnerability masks her firepower, ambition and strong will, advisers said. Not one to fit comfortably into convention -- and not comfortable being a victim, either -- Palin spoke Friday as if she was rolling the dice and betting on herself. She presented herself as a game-changer stepping onto a stage of her own making.

That is absolutely unreal. I'm guessing Philip Rucker, the author of this article, didn't bother to listen to Palin's resignation speech (or pretty much any public speech Palin has given since McCain tapped her for VP). Just wow.

I'm sure Rucker saw the speech. But it is bizarre to say that Palin is uncomfortable in the role of the victim. In fact I'm not sure I've ever found a better use for this much over-used word. As Noam Scheiber explained in one of the earliest and perhaps most insightful profiles of Palin, victimhood and resentment are Palin's twin touchstones. They define who she is.

Rumsfeld, on abandoning Geneva Conventions: "All of a sudden, it was just all happening."

DC Councilman Marion Barry arrested on stalking charges.