This week, President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates teamed up to propose an overhaul of the defense budget -- to shift money away from expensive cold war era projects and spend more money on more unconventional 21st century war tools. The budgetary increase was, however, lost on certain Republicans and members of the media. (e.g. The Page's headline: "Gates Takes Knife To Pentagon Budget.")

As Jon Stewart put it, "On what planet is a four percent spending increase a huge cut?!?"

Maybe it's the same planet where Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) will lead a revolt to overthrow President Obama's socialist regime. This week, she toned down her rhetoric-- replacing calls for violent revolution with metaphorical violence: "I want [my constituents] to be armed with knowledge, so they can be dangerous to the policies of the left."

Elsewhere in crazytown, Michael Steele started raising money for the RNC using a familiar set of memes: That Barack Obama and ACORN -- one of the great right-wing bogeymen of 2008,-- plan to rig the 2010 Census in order to to solidify Democratic control in 2012.

And down in Texas, at a committee hearing on a voter-identification bill, GOP state Rep. Betty Brown, asked a representative from a Chinese-American group if they could just adopt new names that would be "easier for Americans to deal with."

The scourge of Somalian pirates finally hit the front page this week with the attack on a U.S. flagged and crewed ship. But these types of attacks have been going on for months in the Gulf of Aden and nearby waters. We put together a slide show documenting the last year's worth of piracy.

In legal news, Judge Emmet Sullivan formally dropped the charges against former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, thanks to prosecutorial misconduct. Sullivan also announced that he's appointed a special prosecutor of his own to investigate the six Justice Department lawyers responsible for the string of missteps which doomed the case.

Who are the prosecutors that bungled the Ted Stevens prosecution -- and how could they have screwed it up so badly? TPMMuckraker took a look.

In his first interview since being charged with fraud, Sir Allen Stanford raved and whimpered at ABC News on the streets of DC. Stanford confessed to such recent hardships as... flying commercial. With his assets frozen -- including private jet -- Stanford learned that TSA makes you take your shoes off to go through security. Oh the indignities.

In election news, the race for New York's 20th congressional district, between Dem candidate Scott Murphy and GOP NY State assemblyman Jim Tedisco, is STILL unresolved after 11 days. Eric Kleefeld, TPM's expert on unresolved elections, has the latest rundown on the uncounted absentee ballots.

Al Franken's lead swelled from 225 votes to 312 votes, after the last of the previously uncounted ballots are tallied in the Minnesota Senate recount trial. But Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) just can't let go-- he remains fixated on keeping Al Franken from being seated for as long as possible.

And in the latest installment of his "Better Know a District" series, Colbert manages to get freshman Rep. Dan Maffei (D-NY) to don a fake goatee and mustache and declare his love of cocaine, among other absurdities. (See know the 19th district with Rep. Wexler here.)

For more absurdity, check out one anti-gay rights group's attempts to mobilize against gay marriage. The National Organization for Marriage has dubbed their campaign "2 Million for Marriage." Or 2M4M. Woops.

It was a bad week for newspapers. The Washington Post's own enviro reporters took on the paper's George Will over his misleading (to the point of being false) global warming columns. And at the Times last month there was an op-ed criticizing Madoff's "victims" without disclosing key biographical details about the author-- her brother was a major investor with Madoff, (just accused in a civil fraud complaint by NY AG Andrew Cuomo); this week when TPMMuckraker called to inqure about the lack of disclosure editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal told us, politely, to bugger off.

With so many papers folding, this just hurts.

Bob Dylan, in an interview, on Obama:

"He's like a fictional character, but he's real. First off, his mother was a Kansas girl. Never lived in Kansas though, but with deep roots. You know, like Kansas bloody Kansas. John Brown the insurrectionist. Jesse James and Quantrill. Bushwhackers, Guerillas. Wizard of Oz Kansas. I think Barack has Jefferson Davis back there in his ancestry someplace. And then his father. An African intellectual. Bantu, Masai, Griot type heritage - cattle raiders, lion killers. I mean it's just so incongruous that these two people would meet and fall in love. You kind of get past that though. And then you're into his story. Like an odyssey except in reverse."