A bit tongue-in-cheek. But if you take some of the political designations with a grain of salt, it's not a bad point, from TPM Reader RS ...

I have been a mac user since 1985 because I'm a composer and Apple computer has always been the best platform for music, except for a brief period when Steven Jobs created the NeXT computer.

One thing that fascinates me is the way that Apple continues to maintain a cool/benevolent/almost counter-culture reputation, while actually being an incredibly aggressive, ruthless, arguably monopolistic company (the way they are cornering the music and phone businesses, and the way they so carefully guard applications on the iphone). Compare this to Microsoft, which has a more fascist ambiance around it.

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Gary Kreep

After we published our story about the new 'birther' informercial running in a number of local TV markets in the South, a reader wrote in to say: Hey, it's not funny. This is a deliberate and shameful effort to denigrate and erode people's belief in the legitimacy of Obama's presidency.

I was taken aback a bit at first. Because I agree. The mix of nihilism, know-nothingism and racism fueling the birther movement is shocking to behold. But as to funny or shameful, my only quibble is that I'm not sure we have to choose. And it turns out there's a third option.

You don't have to look to hard at the informercial to see that while it may be shameful and it may be funny, it pretty clearly looks like an effort to separate a lot of hyped-up birther rubes from their money, quite possibly to pad the wallets of those in the rube hyping business. First of all, the pitch in the informercial is that for a mere $30 you will receive a birther bumper sticker and your name added to a spam fax sent to the Justice Department and the 50 state attorneys general.

But that's not the only reason.

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Okay, just be warned. There's no politics or news in this post. But there was so much interest in last night's post about what computers our readers use, I thought I'd share some more information about browsers.

Be warned, only the geeks among you come any further.

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Laura Rozen has some of the tick tock on the President's apparently hastily planned announcement this morning on Iran's nuclear program.

Image number five from today's G20 Summit Slideshow ...

If you're not living in one of the eleven towns in the South where the new Obama 'birther' informercial is running, we've prepared this birthermercial highlight reel to bring you up to speed.

If you're still missing Second City TV from back in the old days, this may bring back some fond memories.

With Sen. Kyl pointing out that men have no interest in having insurance cover child birth, no doubt women will note that they have little interest in covering prostate and testicular cancer. And surely men will get back into the act and want to get out of under the cost of covering breast cancer, which very few men get. Indeed, you can see how everyone should probably insist on special customized insurance policies which cover the ailments they plan on getting and avoid paying for the ones they don't. As long as everyone plans well and makes good predictions everyone should be able to save a lot of money.

Paul Kirk sworn in as junior senator from Massachusetts.

Not our usual fare, but you can't ignore it when an unemployed man living on the dole makes one of the greatest archaeological finds in British history using a metal detector. Our slideshow of the 11 pounds of gold and nearly 6 pounds of silver artifacts, believed to be Anglo-Saxon war loot from the 7th century:

It had to happen. Birthers go on the air with their own late night 'birther' informercial in Texas.

MA judge rejects GOP big move to block Kirk appointment to Kennedy senate seat.

Sen. Kyl snarks to Sen. Stabenow that he doesn't care about maternity benefits since he's a man.

Stabenow snarks back in style.

See the video.

We now have three counter-terrorism arrests in different parts of the country (apparently in totally unconnected plots) in little more than a week.

In addition to the Zazi case, which has been percolating for a while now, men were arrested in Illinois and Texas earlier this week, each of whom allegedly attempted to detonate explosives in buildings. In both cases, they were dummy explosives provided by government informants, much like in the case of Newburgh Four back in May.

The new cases also show how different most of these stings are from the Zazi case, which had federal agents so spooked because he allegedly had not only the intent to commit a terrorist act but the training and means as well.

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Fox News had a breaking news report this morning that Nancy Pelosi was working on drafting her own health care reform bill -- a report that Pelosi's office immediately knocked down. TPMDC has more.

Obama's joint appearance with Sarkozy and Brown this morning. Watch.

The local coroner in Kentucky confirms to TPMmuckraker that the word "fed" was written on that dead census worker's chest, apparently using a felt tip marker.

White House Counsel Gregory Craig is out as pointman for closing Gitmo.

Greg Sargent catches one of those oddities that emerge from time to time in public opinion. In this case, nearly two-thirds of those surveyed in the new CBS/NYT poll think Republicans are opposing Obama on health care reform for political reasons -- but nearly two-thirds also think Democrats shouldn't pass reform without Republican support.

Senate Democrats fail to overturn White House deal with big pharma in drug prices in a Finance Committee vote. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Obama will make a statement on the revelation of a secret underground Iranian nuclear facility.

Late Update: More on the announcement by Obama, France's Sarkozy and Britain's Brown here.

Juliet Eilperin in the Washington Post:

Climate researchers now predict the planet will warm by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century even if the world's leaders fulfill their most ambitious climate pledges, a much faster and broader scale of change than forecast just two years ago, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations Environment Program.

The new overview of global warming research, aimed at marshaling political support for a new international climate pact by the end of the year, highlights the extent to which recent scientific assessments have outstripped the predictions issued by the Nobel Prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007.

I'd been noticing over time that the distribution of browser usage in our audience suggested some real growth in the number of our readers who use Macs. But I hadn't looked at the operating system statistics for a while. So I was still pretty surprised to see that just under 30% of our audience uses Macs. To be precise, in September, 29.43% of the visits to TPM were from Macs; 65.72% were from Windows operation systems. (Also interesting: the 3rd highest, far, far back at 2.36% is the iPhone operating system.)

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From the new Times/CBS poll out this evening ...

"Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan -- something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get -- that would compete with private health insurance plans?"

Favor 65%
Oppose 26%

Interestingly, according to the poll, support for a public option has jumped 5 points since late August and opposition to it has dropped 8 points.

New Times/CBS poll. Obama approve 56%, disapprove 33%.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

Sen. Schumer and Sen. Rockefeller seemed surprisingly confident that the health care bill will contain a real public option on a conference call that ended a short time ago.

Said Schumer: "The health care bill that is signed into law by the President will have a good, strong, robust public option."

TPM's Ben Frumin was on the call and files this report.

The 76-year-old associate justice was taken from the Supreme Court to a Washington hospital earlier this evening as a precaution after feeling faint.

The FBI has made two arrests in the last 48 hours in separate undercover operations in which would-be bombers were given fake explosives which they proceeded to try to detonate near major buildings. Below are excerpts from FBI press releases.

Springfield, Il.:

[O]n September 23, 2009, [Michael C.] Finton drove a van containing what he understood to be explosive material and parked it directly in front of the northwest corner of the federal building. Finton got out of the van, locked the door and got into another vehicle driven by the undercover FBI officer and drove away. Within a few blocks of the federal building, Finton made a cell phone call to remotely detonate the purported bomb in the van. FBI agents arrested Finton immediately after he attempted to detonate the device.

Dallas, Texas:

Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, 19, has been arrested and charged in a federal criminal complaint with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. Smadi, who was under continuous surveillance by the FBI, was arrested today near Fountain Place, a 60-story glass office tower located at 1445 Ross Avenue in downtown Dallas, after he placed an inert/inactive car bomb at the location. Smadi, a Jordanian citizen in the U.S. illegally, lived and worked in Italy, Texas. He has repeatedly espoused his desire to commit violent jihad and has been the focus of an undercover FBI investigation.

In both cases, the FBI said there was no connection to the alleged terror plot in New York and Colorado, though I wonder if they didn't bring these cases to conclusion as a result of the widespread coverage of the NYC investigation, which was apparently terminated prematurely because an alleged misstep by the NYPD tipped off the target.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH): Rahm's "wrong" on public option's chances in the Senate.

John McCain considers him an affable dinner companion; the US again considers him a world leader in good repute; join us as Muammar Qaddafi does the UN, the G8 and pretty much the whole world in today's TPM Qaddafi slideshow ...

Bill Sparkman

State police now say that Bill Sparkman, the Census worker found dead of an apparent hanging in Kentucky, maybe wasn't hanged at all. His body was apparently in contact with ground when it was found.

Separately, a retired state trooper who knew Sparkman tells TPMmuckraker that'd he'd warned Sparkman about doing his Census work in isolated parts of rural Kentucky, but not necessarily because of anti-government extremism.

Said Gilbert Acciardo: "I said, you're going into rural Kentucky, isolated areas. Be careful over there -- people may not understand that you're there to gather statistics."

Karl Rove warns that Dems are coming for your beer.

Yesterday Rep. Steve King (R) of Iowa was revealing that the movement to legalize same sex marriage was a stalking horse designed to usher socialism into the United States. Today he went to the well of the House of representatives to deliver a lengthy speech claiming President Obama is the chief organizer and leader of ACORN.

He even debuted a new custom work of Socialist Realist art to dramatize the point.

Late Update: Or not so custom. It turns out it was a cover from the National Review from a few months ago.

Here's our update on that hanging of a Census worker down in Kentucky with "fed" allegedly scrawled on his chest.

According to a poll, New Yorkers don't want President Obama telling Gov. Paterson not to run for governor. They want to tell him not to run themselves.

The Massachusetts GOP has gone to court to try to block the appointment of Paul Kirk to the U.S. Senate.

The married FBI agent who was forced to resign after his supervisors found a list of his sexual conquests -- which included a confidential informant in the Bill Jefferson case and other FBI agents -- had drawn up the list at the urging of his therapist. No word yet on how it ended up in his supervisors' hands.

Rahm: Public option will not make it through the Senate.

Najibullah Zazi

Let's start by stipulating that conventional and even very low tech explosives like those used in Madrid and London are plenty dangerous enough. Even the 9/11 attacks, in a sense, we're driven by the jet fuel in the freshly fueled planes. But the WMD terror charges brought this morning against Najibullah Zazi remind us that federal law has an incredibly expansive definition 'WMD'.

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New numbers from the Congressional Research Service show civilian and Iraqi police deaths way down over the last 18 months, but Iraq remains a remarkably violent place.

A new indictment this morning in the alleged bombing plot with threads in Colorado and New York City. We have the details.

More here.

When Deval Patrick made it official a short time ago and appointed Paul Kirk to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, Kirk confirmed that he will only serve until a special election and will not seek election to the seat.

With the 'Gang of Six' now residing in the dustbin of history, Sen. Chuck Grassley is looking for a new bipartisan 'gang' to help block health care reform.

New York Gov. David Paterson: "[I]f I got to a point where I thought that my candidacy was hurting my party, obviously it would be rather self-absorbed to go forward."

All indications are that Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick will appoint former DNC chairman Paul Kirk to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat at an 11 a.m. press conference today. That and that day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Push for same sex marriage actually part of a master plan to bring about socialism, says Rep. Steve King (R-IA).

Acorn says it's now been contacted by the FBI and the Brooklyn DAs office over the staffer/bordello advising scandal.

Recently released after a seven year stint in the big house, former Rep. James Trafficant pledges to kick the IRS "in the crotch real good" if he manages to get elected again.

Chuck Norris calls for special custom Tea Party movement desecration of American flags.

Kathleen Willey

Well, at least recycling Clinton-era freak show contestants for the new 21st century anti-Obama freakshow.

WorldNetDaily digs up Kathleen Willey (who accused Bill Clinton of fondling her and possibly murdering her husband) and sends her undercover to unearth the ugly truth about the Cash-For-Clunkers program.

Steele statement on Obama: Why should we believe what he said at the UN.

How will Obama answer for those ACORN women in Baltimore?

Georgia congressman says US already has "soviet-style" health care system.

Only he's a Democrat.

The big news from the United Nations today? According to Fox News, it was Qaddafi praising President Obama as a "son" of Africa. Watch.

Sen. Roberts (R-KS) pushes for health insurance lobbyists to get a 72 hour online review window on new health care bill.

Fmr. FBI Agent John Guandolo

You may know John Guandolo as the former FBI agent hitting the right-wing lecture circuit warning of a secret Muslim cabal working to bring America under Sharia Law and the federal agents who are too wimpy to stop them. Now you can learn about the serial philandering that got him booted from the FBI and came close to scuttling the Rep. Bill Jefferson (D-LA) because Guandolo couldn't keep his hands off one of the government's key witnesses.

Given his extreme opposition to Sharia Law it is conceivable that Guandolo saw his turbo shagfest as a one-man rebellion against its oppressive strictures.

TPM Reader WB on Truthers and Birthers ...

I'm sadly not at all surprised at those high 9/11 "truther" numbers among Democrats. I've had many conversations with friends and family who believe some variation of this nonsense (anywhere from "Bush let it happen" to "the the attacks were planned and executed at the highest levels of government, the planes didn't cause the collapse, etc."). It is tiring, but not altogether surprising because really traumatic national events like 9/11 or Presidential assassinations tend to lead to conspiracy theories. Pick any national trauma of similar magnitude and you will find a nexus of conspiracy theories floating around it (JFK, Pearl Harbor, etc.).

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Fox says Paul Kirk, former DNC chief and longtime Kennedy friend, will get the interim appointment to Kennedy's seat in the senate.

Late Update: Gov. Patrick's (D) office no commented the report when we asked them about it.

On that poll of extremisms, TPM Reader SR sends us this ...

My specialty is survey research, and I think you are taking these results a little too seriously. People are petulant, truculent, and belligerent. A good portion those answering in these ridiculous ways, are just giving a middle finger to a politician that they hate, either Bush or Obama. I have seen this many times, and it highly correlates with strong partisans and ideologues. But that does not mean that they actually believe it. They just think it is funny to answer a poll question in a belligerent way.

I've actually had the same thought. And I would say on two different levels.

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Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) is leading a special "truth squad" delegation to the UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen to tell the foreigners Obama doesn't know what he's talking about. And they shouldn't listen to other members of Congress saying the US is going to pass legislation.

There have been a number of recent polls purporting to show that as crazy as rank-and-file Republicans may be on the place of President Obama's birth or whether his coming was predicted in the Book of Revelation that a lot of Democrats are pretty far out there on the issue of trutherism. The problem, though, has been that the poll questions have all been too vague or poorly worded to get at what people are actually saying.

There is after all a world of difference between saying that the Bush administration had enough information about a pending attack that they should have done something to stop it and saying that the Bush administration knew about the attacks and intentionally let them happen in order to get an excuse to go to war in Iraq.

But this latest poll finally gets the question tightly worded enough to get at just what people are saying. And the number of Dems who believe the latter is pretty high.

Last night I flagged former Postie Allan Lengel's story (it's at his new fed law enforcement news site) about former FBI agen John Guandolo who came close to blowing the Rep. Jefferson (D-LA) corruption case with a one-man shagfest through much of the Bureau and at least one big case. The problem for Jefferson case was that Guandolo at first harassed and then began an apparently consensual sexual relationship with a key government witness in the case.

But it gets better.

Some snooping by TPM's Justin Elliott reveals that since getting tossed out of the FBI for not keeping his pants on Guandolo's become a big sensation on the wingnut speakers circuit and a darling of the screechier blogs as a would-be voice crying out in the wilderness warning of the Muslim takeover of America. As Atlas Shrugs notes here, Guandolo now claims that a hidden network of Islamic organizations are working to bring the US under Sharia Law.

We'll have more on Guandolo shortly.

VIDEO: Obama addresses UN General Assembly.

The news so far (to the extent that these sorts of speeches make news) Obama referred to the US practice of 'torture' and that he had put a stop to it.

Jon Stewart, on the Values Voter Summit, porn making you gay, and Tom Delay's gayer-than-gay dance moves. Watch.

What a trans-Pacific flight that must have been: Randy Scheunemann accompanying Sarah Palin to Hong Kong where she addressed investors yesterday. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

From Allan Lengel at ticklethewire.com ...

A married FBI agent who had an affair with a key government witness in the corruption case of ex-Rep. William Jefferson, was also having affairs with female FBI agents and was under internal investigation, according to court and FBI documents.

Read the rest here.

That seems to be what he's saying. "As I've said to the president many times, 'If that's the bill you want, vote it up or down."

No blocking votes?

Stars speak out against Obama's attack on health care insurers.

Go back to the go-go 90s with us to see Hassan Nemazee courting Clinton, Gore ... and the GOP.

Yesterday in Richmond, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) reminded us how hollow Republicans can sound addressing real people with real problems. When a woman told the story of an uninsured friend stricken with cancer, Cantor suggested she seek out "an existing government program" (presumably the ones Republicans haven't succeeded in eliminating yet), a charity, or one of the "hospitals here who do provide charity care."

And in a bold statement of principle, Cantor declared: "No one in this country, given who we are, should ever be sitting without an option to go be addressed."

The hucksterism doesn't translate well from cable news to town halls.

"Fascination" isn't one I like using about an apparent terror plot, especially not one that may have been planned for the city my family and I live in. But I keep feeling drawn to learn more about this apparent terror plot centered on Queens, New York and Denver, Colorado, because the more we hear of it the more it sounds like this may be the first really genuine terror plot to be publicly rolled up in the United States since September 11.

Let me first be clear by what I mean by 'genuine'.

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What CNN was reduced to ...

Mass senate passes bill to allow a special appointment to Sen. Kennedy's vacant seat. Now it just needs the governor's signature.

Paul Pilar, former CIA counter-terrorism hand, took up on the question of 'safe havens' on the Post oped page last week ...

Rationales for maintaining the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan are varied and complex, but they all center on one key tenet: that Afghanistan must not be allowed to again become a haven for terrorist groups, especially al-Qaeda. Debate about Afghanistan has raised reasons to question that tenet, one of which is that the top al-Qaeda leadership is not even in Afghanistan, having decamped to Pakistan years ago. Another is that terrorists intent on establishing a haven can choose among several unstable countries besides Afghanistan, and U.S. forces cannot secure them all.

The debate has largely overlooked a more basic question: How important to terrorist groups is any physical haven? More to the point: How much does a haven affect the danger of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests, especially the U.S. homeland? The answer to the second question is: not nearly as much as unstated assumptions underlying the current debate seem to suppose.

Read the rest here.

Sen. Ensign tries to reclaim some post-sex scandal credibility with conservatives with a few dozen nonsense amendments to the Finance Committee health care reform bill.

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay

As promised ...

Our special Tom Delay Dancing With The Stars highlight reel.

Behold the artistry. Feel the power of ... The Hammer.

Watch.

Hassan Nemazee isn't the first alleged Ponzi schemer connected to Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign.

There was also Norman Hsu, whom you might recall. He was the big Hillary donor with a criminal past who funneled campaign contributions through straw donors. He's in jail now on a conviction from the 1990s that he was on the lam from when he got caught on the campaign finance misdeeds, and he's subsequently been convicted for a separate Ponzi scheme and for campaign finance violations. So Hsu had more than his share of trouble.

While Hsu was melting down in 2007 -- he jumped bail in Los Angeles, left a suicide note and was found in the fetal position on the floor of an Amtrak train in Chicago surrounded by pills -- the Clinton campaign rolled out one of its fundraising honchos to defend itself against the blowback from Hsu: a guy by the name of Hassan Nemazee, who, hindsight being 20/20 and all, gave some quotes to the press that drip with irony considering what Nemazee himself was allegedly up to at the time.

Former Secretary of State Condi Rice says "If you want another terrorist attack in the U.S., abandon Afghanistan." One might hang this on her. But that wouldn't make sense since it's the assumption that supports our entire Afghanistan policy.

I should say upfront that I was one of those many people who thought, for much of the last decade, that one of the many problems with our involvement in Iraq was that it distracted us from a more serious fight in Afghanistan.

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From President Obama's speech this morning to the UN on global climate change:

[T]he journey is long. The journey is hard. And we don't have much time left to make it. It is a journey that will require each of us to persevere through setback, and fight for every inch of progress, even when it comes in fits and starts. So let us begin. For if we are flexible and pragmatic; if we can resolve to work tirelessly in common effort, then we will achieve our common purpose: a world that is safer, cleaner, and healthier than the one we found ...

The full text of the President's speech is here.

We're looking more deeply today into the case of Hassan Nemazee, the big-time Democratic fundraiser who's now been charged with a massive Ponzi scheme, which he used to fund not only a lavish lifestyle but also extravagant giving to Democrats over most of the last decade.

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Here's more of that dancin' fool Tom Delay from last night's episode of Dancing With the Stars. We'll have a more complete highlight reel for you later this morning.

The Top 10 reasons Obama went on Letterman last night. Watch.

The Boston Globe endorses Michael Dukakis as the fill-in for the late Ted Kennedy until a special election can be held. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Regarding the Hassan Nemazee bank fraud/Ponzi scheme, TPM Reader NB wonders the same thing we've been kicking around here:

Trying to get my head around this ... I really only have one question: Shouldn't large banks have more due diligence than this?

I mean, the low seven-figure loans, sure ... that's not that much money; just call the number that the guy gives you. But at the point where someone's borrowing tens of millions of dollars, shouldn't you be doing more than that? It just feels like an extremely flimsy scheme.

I mean, if it costs you $100K (two or three person-months worth of work), the largest loan here needs something like .15% odds of a total collapse for the due diligence to pay off.

Is there something more to this scheme that we're missing?

Joe Biden laid it on the line today at a fundraising event in Arizona:

It's not that Republicans are bad guys. This is just the bet they've made. They're going to put their chips on movement in the 35 seats in the House that have been traditionally Republican districts and trying to take them back. If they take them back, this is the end of the road for what Barack and I are trying to do. This is their one shot. If they don't break the back of our effort in this upcoming election, you're going to see the things we said we're for happen.

The federal prosecutor bringing the case against Democratic fundraiser Hassan Nemazee is a Democratic appointee, Preet Bharara. Before he became U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan), Bharara was counsel to Sen. Chuck Schumer and played a major role in investigating the U.S. attorney firing scandal, which at its heart was about using the awesome powers of federal law enforcement to reward friends and punish enemies.

A Senate Democratic source emails:

Some feel that if there is a single person who is responsible for bringing down [Alberto] Gonzales (which of course there isn't), it's Preet. This is the kind of non-partisan work that U.S. Attorneys ought to do.

But Bharara's willingness to go after a Democratic donor is actually even more striking considering the following juxtaposition. One of the many hats Nemazee wore over the years as a Democratic fundraiser was "national finance chair" of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2006, according to a 2007 article in The Nation. You might remember the 2006 cycle as a historic success for DSCC, vastly outraising its Republican counterpart and wresting control of the Senate from the Republicans. The man credited with much of that success was the chair of DSCC at the time: Chuck Schumer.

So in this case, one of Schumer's former staff counsel is prosecuting one of Schumer's former fundraising chieftains.

How big a Democratic fundraiser was Hassan Nemazee? FEC filings give you a glimpse.

We've also posted the Nemazee indictment here.

In his appearance on Letterman tonight, the President answers the most pressing question of the day: "I think it's important to realize that I was actually black before the election." Watch.

A federal grand jury in New York today handed down an indictment of uber-Democratic donor and fundraiser Hassan Nemazee accusing him of defrauding three banks of nearly $300 million over the last decade and -- here's the kicker -- funneling some of that money into political contributions to candidates and PACs.

Nemazee was the finance chair of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign and went on to raise millions of dollars for President Obama in the general election. But prosecutors say Nemazee's high-flying lifestyle was an elaborate hoax perpetrated by obtaining fraudulent loans from major banks, according to a DOJ press release:

"For more than ten years, Hassan Nemazee projected the illusion of wealth, stealing more than $290 million so that he could lead a lavish lifestyle and play the part of heavyweight political fundraiser," said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. "Today's indictment exposes the sheer brazenness of Nemazee's schemes and marks the end of his decade of deception."

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Here's a little sneak peek of Tom Delay's Dancing With The Stars debut tonight. Viewer discretion advised.

Late Update: TPM Reader LB:

Never mind the hips, what's with the wrists? Is Tom DeLay deliberately trying to be limp-wristed, "making fun" as his partner/instructor commented (and being a first-class jerk in the process, IMO), can he just not get past the stereotypes in his subconscious, or is his inner Larry Craig trying desperately to surface? Inquiring minds, and all that.

Good point.

A couple months ago I told you we were expanding (actually doubling the size of) our reporting staff at TPM. So I wanted to give you a quick update.

Over the summer I asked TPM's Managing Editor David Kurtz to relocate from Missouri to Washington, DC to head up a new TPM DC office. And our new DC Bureau will open next week.

We also have two new hires to announce. Christina Bellantoni of the Washington Times will be joining us as Senior Reporter-Blogger covering the White House and Obama's Washington. We've also hired Evan McMorris-Santoro, from The Hotline, who will also be reporting for us from DC.

We'll be announcing more new hires and details shortly.

US Attorney firing scandal luminary Tim Griffin, the Rove protege who was installed as US Attorney in Arkansas after his predecessor Bud Cummins was fired, has just announced he's running for Congress.

What's the old saying? If all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail?

Birther queen Orly Taitz is now claiming that Obama's birth certificate may not be the only supposed forgery floating around. In an email to TPMmuckraker, she suggests that the letter her now former client sent to a federal court in Georgia Friday, declaring Taitz is no longer her lawyer in a birther lawsuit, might just be a forgery, too!

The James Carville-Mary Matalin union has always been a head-scratcher, but yesterday's joint appearance on CNN was a bit creepy.

At the Values Voters Summit over the weekend, Sen. Tom Coburn's chief of staff opened a new front in the War Against Hormones (WAH) when he explained that if we tell teenage boys that straight porn will make them gay, they'll never touch the stuff again.

Sen. Snowe (R) proposes an amendment to the Baucus bill to include a triggered public option.

Latest person to say they're filing an ethics complaint against birther lawyer/agitator Orly Taitz before the California bar: her now ex-client.

Our photographer spent the weekend at the Values Voters Summit in Washington, DC. See the results here (Rep. Michele Bachmann included -- and special glam shots of John Boehner, Bill Bennett doing some retro speech gesticulation, the Mittster, Straw Poll winner Mike Huckabee and more.

Click image for full size picture.

As Susan Page at USA Today notes, one of the more colorful anecdotes from Taylor Branch's new Bill Clinton bio involves the efforts to corral a drunken Boris Yeltsin during a 1995 visit to Washington -- efforts that apparently had mixed success if Yeltsin's trying to hail a cab on Pennsylvania Avenue in the middle of the night clad only in his underwear is any indication.

Gov. David Paterson (D-NY) is telling the White House to go jump in a lake after the President made it clear that he'd prefer the unpopular Paterson not seek re-election. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Michael Steele accuses Barack Obama of pushing David Paterson to drop out of the New York governor's race because he's black.