Amazon Video recently released 14 series pilots, and asked the internet to vote. The big winner? "Alpha House," a very funny series by Garry "Doonesbury" Trudeau about four wingnut senators sharing the same house. (I'm hoping "Onion News Empire," an Airplane-esque takeoff, also makes the cut.)

Let's just say that I think you may recognize a couple of the senators.

So what story lines would you like to see them use?

As if it weren't already clear that the so-called "IRS scandal" is nothing of the sort, now it's becoming even clearer that it's a just another bit of that down-the-rabbit-hole-up-is-downism in which conservatives have come to specialize in recent years.

The Institute for Research and Education in Human Rights -- which, among other things, monitors the far-right extremists who have been filling the ranks of the Tea Party -- has an excellent takedown of the IRS nonsense:

The Tea Party and the IRS “Scandal”:
The Actual Facts of the Case

While it is well-known that the so-called IRS scandal has been used by Tea Partiers to bash the IRS, less well known are the actual facts of the case.

Some of the flagged groups did have their tax-exempt status delayed or did face some additional scrutiny, but not a single group has been denied tax-exempt status.

A May 14 draft report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that none of the 296 questionable applicants had been denied, “For the 296 potential political cases we reviewed, as of December 17, 2012, 108 applications had been approved, 28 were withdrawn by the applicant, none had been denied, and 160 cases were open from 206 to 1,138 calendar days (some crossing two election cycles).” (p. 14)

In fact, the only known 501(c)(4) applicant to recently have its status denied happens to be a progressive group: the Maine chapter of Emerge America, which trains Democratic women to run for office. Although the group did no electoral work, and didn’t participate in independent expenditure campaign activity either, its partisan nature disqualified it from being categorized as working for the “common good.”

The Inspector General’s report found that in the “majority of cases, we agreed that the applications submitted included indications of significant political campaign intervention.” (p. 10). In fact, only 91 of the 296, roughly 31%, of the applications reviewed for the report did not have “indications of significant political campaign intervention.” In other words, more than two thirds of those flagged for processing by a team of specialists had those indications.

That sort of political campaign intervention would normally disqualify a group from 501(c)(4) status, but the deluge of Tea Party applications combined with the politicization of the process has allowed them to slip through. A closer look by IREHR at the activities of some of the Tea Party groups that are currently under review or have received non-profit status from the IRS, reveals a difficult and dangerous situation.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

As the report concludes:

Rather than the so-called scandal cooked up by Tea Party groups, the real criticism of the IRS may be that it has let so many of these groups get away with what are apparently egregious violations.

That's what all the yelling's about. It's to keep people from seeing the plain truth: Many of these people really are tax cheats trying to game the system for partisan advantage.

Of course. After all, it's not as if anyone is going to stop them! They crashed the world economy and got nothing more than a couple of taps on the wrist, so why wouldn't they do this?

California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who filed suit against JPMorgan Chase last Thursday, says that from January 2008 to April 2011 -- just as people were reeling from the Wall Street-driven financial crisis -- the megabank unleashed over 100,000 lawsuits against consumers over uncollected credit-card debt in the state of California alone. That includes 469 lawsuits in a single day.

Now, it usually takes time and money to pursue lawsuits through the court system. So how in the world did Chase keep up this breakneck pace? The lawsuit claims that the bank took a number of little shortcuts, like robo-signing, in which bank employees produce sworn documents and other legal filings without bothering to check bank records or examine cases for accuracy.

Another nasty trick Chase is accused of deploying is what’s known, appropriately, as “sewer service.” This means that Chase failed to properly serve notice of debt collection lawsuits against consumers (it dumped the notices “in the sewer”), but then lied and said it did. This means, you, as a consumer, have no idea that a lawsuit has been launched against you.

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Good for them! So far, $75,000 in pledges have been made:

Want to buy the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and six other daily newspapers? No, I don’t mean at the newsstand.
The Other 98%, a nonprofit organization, has setup a crowdfunding campaign to buy Tribune Co.’s newspaper business. The initiative is meant to prevent the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch or some other billionaire from buying it.

The campaign is looking to raise $660 million in the next 31 days so it can outbid the Kochs – the high-powered, libertarian brothers known for hosting $50,000-a-plate fundraising events for Republican candidates, according to the pitch on Indiegogo, a crowdfunding site. The group promoting the campaign was founded in 2010 with the mission “to kick corporate lobbyists out of DC,” according to its website.

In the case of the stop-the-Kochs campaign, the group doesn’t want “press freedom to be subject to the benevolence or non-benevolence of a billionaire,” according to Nicole Carty, one of the organization’s activists. “The press belongs to the people,” she said.

The newspapers were valued at $623 million last year, according to bankruptcy filings, making crowdfunding target of $660 million a competitive bid.

All Things Democrat - who could have predicted that the GOP would fabricate emails?

Echidne of the Snakes - look! Michael Kinsley said something stupid on the internet!

Prairie Weather - House Republicans: they just can''t help themselves;

Right Wing Watch - look! Alan Keyes said something stupid on the internet!

The Mahablog - GOP flogs dead horse, tilts at windmills, same old.

blogenfreude blogs at stinque.com, tweets @blogenfreude, and loves this guy.

Send tips to MBRU [at] crooksandliars [DOT] com.

Per Parenting Magazine, "Show and tell gold, right there."

Joe Biden writes to the young man who suggested guns should shoot chocolate. The letter reads:

Dear Myles,

I am sorry it took so very long for me to respond to your letter. I really like your idea. If we had guns that shot chocolate, not only would our country be safer, it would be happier. People love chocolate.

You are a good boy, Joe Biden

In my 33-year-and-counting career in politics, I have done my share of both candidate campaigning and issue campaigning. In the last 15 years or so, frankly, I have been more inclined to spend most of my time on the latter, because just fighting the candidate battles doesn’t necessarily move the ball forward in terms of making our country better. I got into politics to fight for the working class and poor families I grew up with in the Midwest, and I have found it far more satisfying to help them through issue fights than in helping candidates who may or may not help them someday. The last several months since the last election are a reminder that even when Democrats win elections, it is no guarantee that good things will happen for regular folks.

Having said that, I do get reminded how important it is to elect people who will actually fight for working families- not just part of the time, not just when it is convenient, but fighting for those families every day with all their heart and all their soul. Senators like Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown remind me every week why it was a great use of my time to have been involved in helping them in last year’s elections.

Brown’s recently filed bill to put pressure on the Too Big To Fail banks is a shot across the bow that has the biggest banks on the defensive; Warren’s perfectly framed bill to let students pay back their college loans at the same rate of interest that the banks get from the Federal Reserve discount window has the bankers and their allies like Third Way screaming bloody murder; and it seems like every time there is a Banking Committee hearing and Warren starts asking someone questions, important issues that desperately needed attention get raised. Warren and Brown are making a huge difference, showing us that if we get a real live two-fisted fighter for working families in the ring on our behalf, it matters.

That’s why I spent most of my time in the 2012 election cycle, where I was working on behalf of Warren and Brown. I knew they would fight hard for the same people I was fighting for, and I knew they would make a difference. And that is why I decided early in this cycle to get involved in helping Rick Weiland run for Senate in South Dakota.

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With Michele "Crazy Eyes" Bachmann leading the charge, freshmen Republican tea party whiners got their opportunity to register that all-important vote to repeal Obamacare yet again.

Because 2014 was so much like 2010, right?

The real news here is the narrowing margin. The last time the House voted, it was by a much wider margin than this. Only two blue dog Democrats joined the Republicans -- Jim Matheson (UT) and Mike McIntyre (NC) making the final count 229-195.

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The problem with the military is all those fags keep raping the ladies.

Uh-huh.

The American Family Association needs smarter bigots.

(h/t Karoli)

Revelations that the Justice Department authorized the seizure of Associated Press phone records have produced condemnation from Congressional Democrats and other Obama allies. But while Capitol Hill Democrats decried the tactics as "inexcusable" (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid), "troubling" (Senator Pat Leahy) and having "impaired the First Amendment" (Rep. Zoe Lofgren), Congressional Republicans have been largely silent. Silent, that is, with good reason. After all, their relative quiet isn't just due to the fact that they demanded the investigation into the 2012 Yemen leak and throughout the Bush presidency supported the prosecution of leakers, whistleblowers and reporters alike. As it turns out, when it came to justifying the unprecedented domestic surveillance of American citizens by the Bush administration, Republicans leaders claimed "you really don't have any civil liberties if you're dead."

Unlike their foaming at the mouth reactions to the Benghazi and IRS imbroglios, the GOP's best and brightest have in comparison exhibited an almost Zen-like patience over the AP affair. Former Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urged giving the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt. While John McCain explained, "For me, to rush to a judgment without knowing all the facts is just not appropriate," Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) defended the Justice Department by proclaiming, "they are doing what we asked them to do, investigate the leak." Meanwhile, the number two Republican in the Senate John Cornyn (R-TX) urged all to withhold judgment:

"Well, I think we need to see how this plays out. I have questions about it, but I'm willing to wait and see how this plays out, whether it was narrowly targeted or whether it was a net that was too broadly cast."

Of course, when Americans learned on December 16, 2005 that President Bush had ordered the National Security Agency (NSA) to undertake warrantless electronic surveillance of their communications, Senator Cornyn insisted that no net could possibly be too broadly cast. Echoing the talking point vomited forth by Kansas Senator Pat Roberts ("You really don't have any civil liberties if you're dead") and Alabama's Jeff Sessions ("Over 3,000 Americans have no civil rights because they are no longer with us"), John Cornyn declared:

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