Disgusting. Remind me the next time I commit a crime to make sure at least one of my co-conspirators is the son of a U.S. Attorney:

The U.S. attorney's office in New Orleans has another month to decide what, if any, charges to bring against the four men arrested at the end of January in Sen. Mary Landrieu's New Orleans office, including conservative activist James O'Keefe.

Louis Moore, the magistrate judge for the federal district court in New Orleans, agreed Wednesday to motions on behalf of the four to extend the time by which the U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District must seek a felony indictment, press misdemeanor charges or drop the case.

Moore said the extension, which was unopposed by prosecutors, would offer the parties "additional time to conduct informal discussions and discovery and avoid or lessen additional proceedings," suggesting the possibility of a plea deal that would likely spare the four from facing felony charges.

At the time of their arrest Jan. 25, O'Keefe, 25, Joseph Basel, 24, Stan Dai, 24, and Robert Flanagan, 24, were charged with entering federal property under false pretenses for the purposes of committing a felony, a crime that carries a maximum term of 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

Isn't that special. How nice that the judicial system is always willing to give another chance to conservative white boys!

I can't say it's a surprise that congressional Republicans think it would be great to start over with health care, or that they're in favor of "incremental" changes. (I'd love to see them get "incremental" health surgery.)

And I can't say it's a surprise that they had virtually nothing useful to offer.

What I realized, though (and maybe this is the driving force behind Obama's puzzling, sometimes infuriating compromises) is that to many Republicans, their illogical fantasies are akin to a child's night terrors. We know there aren't any monsters under the bed, but your child doesn't. So you go through the motions of shooing the monsters away so your child can sleep.

We know that tort reform has such small influence on malpractice premiums that it's virtually meaningless. Any rational person who looks at the research knows this. What you have are a lot of people making what they claim are factual assertions that are nothing more than an intellectual construct to support their emotion-driven conclusion.

We know that selling insurance across state lines doesn't solve the health care crisis, either.

We know that the fastest increases in costly diseases are being driven by environmental pollutants and contaminants, so eating right and exercising doesn't solve the health care crisis, either.

But we're left with a Congress where roughly half of them believe their fairy tales. And since the ideological wars are driven by true believers, we simply don't have the time to convert each of them, one by one, to the realities we face.

Which is simply my long-winded way of saying that Harry Reid needs to shove good healthcare legislation through using reconciliation, right now. No more waiting.

People are dying, every single day. President Obama, we don't need any more to die while you patiently reassure the Republicans about the monsters under the bed.

Get. It. Done. NOW.

TS here. Lassen Sie uns fortfahren, meine Freunde!

On balance, I’m not nostalgic for the university. The women were gorgeous and plentiful, the hockey team was in its heyday, but all was not bread and roses: the math classes were a real pain in the ass and the administration a mite autocratic. The latter two were the cause of sleepless nights and innumerable semesters on probation.

One in particular – a girlfriend, not an academic torment – was, let’s say, creative to a fault and an incurable Dylan fanatic. She even, to her everlasting credit, made a good case for Bob’s Christian period. I am grateful and tip the cap each time I listen to Saved.

Others were a source of frustration. C. was 23 and spoke French, which, since I was 20, seemed like surefire indicators of maturity. Not so. You’d think after x-number of years my college roommate might let me forget that C. once went through the motions of fellating a Star Market banana.

Good times.

That roommate, in fact, has returned to our undergrad city, and says that we had it pretty good. (He’s got lots of degrees, and is an erudite fellow, so I can’t contradict him without further evidence.) “What the hell happened to us?” he asked me recently. “If I knew,” I said, “I wouldn’t be on Jdate.” Anyway, we do agree that dry spells, which, as it happens, I’m experiencing as I write, are a fact of post-college years and should’ve been foreseen.

You can get me at instaputzen [at] gmail [dot com].

via The Gavel: During the 110th Congress, Republicans have repeatedly attempted to use motions to recommit with instructions to kill bills on the verge of passage. The strategy is to institute a divisive change to the bill at the last moment, often unrelated to the original intent of the legislation, hoping that the altered bill can then be defeated on final passage.

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Frank: "Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Speaker - does [Republican] whining come out of my time?"

Frank: "Members on the other side had every opportunity at the committee, and in this open rule fully to debate this and to offer amendments. They chose not to. They chose instead to legislate by ambush..."

[Republicans boo]

Frank: "Oh, Mr. Speaker, I have underestimated the tenderness of the feelings of the members opposite..."

[Democrats laugh asses off]

Link:

During calendar year 2002, 1228 applications were made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for electronic surveillance and physical search. The Court initially approved 1226 applications in 2002. Two applications were "approved as modified," and the United States appealed these applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, as applications having been denied in part. On November 18, 2002, the Court of Review issued a judgment that "ordered and adjudged that the motions for review be granted, the challenged portions of the orders on review be reversed, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court's Rule 11 be vacated, and the cases be remanded with instructions to grant the United States' applications as submitted..." Accordingly, all 1228 applications presented to the Foreign Intelligene Surveillance Court in 2002 were approved.

Sincerely,

John Ashcroft (hat tip via bunkport)

TPM has more information on the FISA requests: "So, in a quarter century, the FISA Court has rejected four government applications for warrants. Only, it's not quite that simple. Take the four rejected applications from 2003...read on"