• Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has decided the best way to lead the country while thousands of people are protesting the fraudulent elections is to tell them to shut up, accept the results or risk a violent crackdown. [MSNBC]

• Most of his people are concerned that his speech will embolden Iran's Basij militias, who operate in plainclothes to foment unrest and have a habit of beating and killing people simply because they can. [Washington Post]
• Meanwhile, we're boosting our defenses around Hawai'i, since Kim Jong Il has threatened it with a missile strike. [Associated Press]
• China is officially denying that its leadership met with Kim Jong Il's son and successor, Kim Jong Un, two weeks ago. You probably should take that piece of propaganda with a very large, ragged grain of salt. [UPI]
• Back in the States, Obama is more popular than Clinton or Dubya were at this point in their Presidencies. [Matthew Yglesias]
• The husband of the woman who was sexing John Ensign while he was separated went on to have a pretty lucrative career with companies close to the GOP Senator. [Politico]
• Ensign is denying he came forward because of a blackmail plot; he's not saying he just wanted to beat his former staff to the media punch. Also, when he reconciled with his wife, he fired his mistress and paid her severance out of his own pocket. [Las Vegas Sun]
• Crazy fucking conservative Michael Savage said, "The white Christian heterosexual married male is the epitome of everything right with America." The family of the guard, Stephen Johns, gunned down at the Holocaust Museum and George Tiller's family — just for starters — might disagree. [Media Matters]
• Stephen Johns' funeral is being held today. The Museum is being closed to allow all employees to attend, and they've set up a fund for his family. [Washington Post]
• The Supreme Court has ruled that there is no Constitutional right to post-conviction DNA testing. Apparently, "justice" is not about truth. Big surprise. [LA Times]
• The Court also issued a ruling throwing out an established age discrimination law, making it harder for anyone to ever prove ever again that they were dismissed or demoted as a result. [LA Times]
• Finally, the blogosphere is a-buzz that Sarah Palin follows John McCain on Twitter but McCain doesn't follow her back...as if their accounts weren't set up and maintained by their staff. [Mother Jones]

• Hillary Clinton (and Joe Biden) wants President Obama to talk tough on Iran, sympathetic on the opposition. The Secretary of State is also currently recuperating from a fractured elbow, which will require surgery in a few weeks. [Plum Line, CNN]

• Thing is, the Administration is struggling to balance calls to support the Iranian protesters with keeping open an avenue for engagement on nuclear issues with the Ayatollah. [Washington Post]
• The Guardian Council, which backed Mahmoud Ahmadenijad, has offered to meet with Mir Hossein Mousavi and the other, failed Presidential candidates. [NY Times]
• In the meantime, Iranian security forces are rounding up everyone who knows or supports Mousavi and tossing them in jail. [London Times]
• Iran's Interior Ministry has ordered an investigation into the Basji militia's and military's attack on Tehran University that left students dead and injured. [Wall Street Journal]
• Increasingly jealous of all the attention Iran is getting, Kim Jong Il has threatened to launch a missile towards Hawai'i. (Because attacking the Pacific archipelago worked out so well for the Japanese in the 40s!) [CBS News]
• Senator John "Fuckmaster Flex" Ensign has resigned from his Senate leadership position, because you can't have sex with a woman and be a leader in the GOP. Just ask Mitch McConnell! [Associated Press]
• Michelle Bachmann is refusing to participate in the United States Census because she's afraid it will steal her soul. [ThinkProgress]
• Former President George W. Bush has emerged from his gated Texas community, saying that he believes the best way to fix the poor economy is for Americans to spend more money. [Washington Times]

• In the wake of the Obama Administration brief in which same sex marriage was compared to incest, its offer to extend some federal benefits to domestic partners seems like a sop, especially without full health insurance benefits. [Huffington Post]

• In response to the debacle over this Administration's efforts to deny that LGBT Americans deserve the same access to federal law as straight Americans, a bunch of LGBT Democrats are pulling out of a large DNC fundraiser and planning protests. [AmericaBlog]
• Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sensed another opportunity to prove his spinelessness and declared that, despite what the White House has said to get out of repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell on its own, it will be accomplished by executive order. [ThinkProgress]
• Elsewhere in the world, Mir Hossein Mousavi has called for massive protests in Iran tomorrow to commemorate those of his supporters killed by Iranian government forces. [MSNBC]
• Violent clashes between Mousavi supporters and Iranian government forces have started spreading outside of Tehran. [UPI]
• Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri agrees with the protesters that the election results were a sham. [McClatchy]
• Some Iranian soldiers have decided that the Mousavi supporters need to be protected from the Basji militias (the main violent faction of the Iranian forces and loyal mostly to Ahmadenijad). [ABC Australia]
• At the other end of the Axis of Evil, the U.S. and South Korean governments have sworn not to give Kim Jong Il any more money to stop his saber-rattling. [Associated Press]
• A Fox News poll shows most Americans have no idea who the fuck is on the Supreme Court. [Washington Post]
• Republican Senator John Ensign has admitted to boinking a campaign staffer (and the wife of one of his former top Senate staffers) for more than a year. The anti-gay-marriage, Promise Keeper Senator claims his disclosure came about because the former staffer tried to blackmail him. [Politico]
• By the way, more than two-thirds of Americans think that politicians' kids — yes, even Sarah Palin's daughters — should not be the butt of late night talk show anchors' jokes. [US News & World Report]
• You wouldn't know that by yesterday's anti-Letterman protests, which drew a sum total of 15 hate-filled people who don't like anyone but Bristol Palin having kids out of wedlock. A picture of the massive event, taken by a friend who prefers to remain nameless, is below. [Huffington Post]

• Following a call from his mom, Dorothy, that she was siding with Sarah Palin, David Letterman made a heartfelt and un-joking apology for his joke last week. Palin accepted, reiterating they both have the right to free speech. [Associated Press]

• President Obama said that the voices of the Iranian people deserve to be heard, too. [Associated Press]
• Iran's Guardian Council, which initially delivered President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad his electoral "victory" has agreed to a recount. Note: It hasn't promised not to do it again. [BBC]
• The potential actual victor, Mir Hossein Mousavi, has attempted to call off a rally in support of him today in an effort to avoid more bloodshed. Pro-Ahmadenijad forces killed 7 of his supporters yesterday. Ahmadenijad flew to Russia to bathe in the acceptance by Russia, China, India and Pakistan of his "victory." [Times]
• Kim Jong Un, the 26-year-old son of Crazypants Kim Jong Il, was busy visiting China last week in secret meetings to make sure the country won't interfere with his succession. Observers now think that the whole "nuclear standoff" thing is just a ploy to convince people in North Korea that Un is ready to lead by fucking the country up worse and allowing him to "fix" it. Sadly, that makes sense for North Korea. [Times]
• Related: North Korea has threatened to nuke us. [UPI]
• Also related: The United States is going to ask nicely to inspect the country's ships for weaponry, which I'm sure is going over really well. [NY Times]
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would like his expanded settlement cookie now that he's sort of conceded to a Palestinian state as long as Palestinians meet some impossible reconditions. [Reuters]
• By the way, Al Qaeda bigwig Khalid Shaikh Mohammed says he lied in order to stop being tortured. Big fucking surprise. [LA Times]
• Italy has agreed to take three Guantanamo detainees off our hands. [Associated Press]
• Obama has promised $73 million in aid to Zimbabwe as soon as we can figure out a way to keep President Robert Mugabe's sticky fingers away from it. [Washington Post]
• Ted Kennedy's health care reform bill will cost at least $1 trillion over 10 years and leave 37 million Americans without insurance (currently, 45 million go without). So it's like what we have now, only the haves will have more, and the have-nots won't. Team America! [Politico]
• The White House has dug up a statement in which Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito says his judicial decisions are influenced by his ethnic background. It only took them, what, a month? [Washington Post]
• The Human Rights Campaign has written a letter to Obama asking him to repudiate the Justice Department brief/full-throated defense of the Defense of Marriage Act, pointing out all the ways in which it denies equal protection under the law to LGBT Americans. [AmericaBlog]

• Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has told supposedly-defeated candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi to pursue his complaints about election irregularities "calmly," while Iranians continued to march in the streets, more leaders declared the elections invalid and forces continued arresting people. [NY Times]

• Elsewhere in the world, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has conditionally agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state, though he has no plans to stop further settlements, which complicates matters. [Reuters]
• Oh, hey, that bin Laden guy is still in Pakistan, says the CIA, not that it plans on doing much about that. [Breitbart]
• CIA Chief Leon Panetta thinks Dick Cheney wants someone to attack the U.S. just so he can say, "I told you so." No shit, Sherlock. [Reuters]
• Four of the Chinese Uighurs we imprisoned without cause in Guantanamo for years are now in Bermuda and loving it. [NY Times]
• We're apparently letting neo-Nazis is the U.S. Army now? [Salon]
• The Obama Administration has decided to mount a vociferous defense of the Defense of Marriage Act, and to fool people into thinking that it "has" to for anything other than craven pandering to conservatives. [AmericaBlog]
• Obama might also impose taxes on health insurance to pay for his health care plans - just like John McCain planned to do - because conservatives hate budget deficits that aren't their own. [Washington Post]
• But we're finally going to start regulating tobacco. [Washington Post]

• Yesterday, Sarah and Todd Palin got incensed about another David Letterman joke in which he suggested A-Rod impregnated her daughter at a Yankees game. (The daughter in attendance was 14-year-old Willow.) Gross. [Politico, LA Times]

• Responding to the Palins' accusations that he'd suggested their daughter had been raped (technically, under New York State law, A-Rod would be committing at least statutory rape by having sex with a 14-year-old), Letterman responded (video at left) that he thought Bristol Palin had been there. He considers the matter "cleared up." [Entertainment Weekly]
• In more blasts from campaigns past, Reverend Jeremiah Wright says that "Them Jews" are keeping Obama from talking to him. Yeah, it's Rahm's fault.
• Fox News' Shepard Smith concedes that, in the wake of yesterday's Holocaust Museum shooting, the DHS report on right-wing extremism his network decried was a warning we ignored at our own peril. He also says his email from probable viewers is increasingly frightening. [Media Matters, Huffington Post]
• The U.S., Great Britain, France, China and Russia have all signed off on UN sanctions against North Korea, where Kim Jong Il is expected to be increasingly rone-ry. [LA Times]
• Jong Il can, however, look forward to a visit from Jesse Jackson. [NPR]
• Obama, for his part, has told Bill Richardson to shut the fuck up about the situation. [Politico]
• With House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unswayed by the Administration's arguments that the troops will be imperiled by the release of more detainee torture photographs, Hillary Clinton is now saying they might put diplomats in danger, too. [Politico, The Plum Line]
• Apparently, the Senate is too busy watching videos of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to care too much about anything else. [NY Times]
• Even though Senate Republicans have had a fit that they didn't have enough time to rip Sotomayor to shreds in the media review Sotomayor's disclosures, they've requested yet more information. [Washington Post]
• The shoe bomber, Richard Reid, is on a hunger strike; apparently being overly thin is a fashion encouraged by the Pentagon to his comrades-in-arms at Guantanamo Bay. [Times, Huffington Post]
• China is saying that Palau can't have the Uighurs they wish to imprison, likely torture and possibly kill, but Palau doesn't care. [Huffington Post]

• Sarah Palin didn't like David Letterman's crack Monday night about her "slutty flight attendant look" (neither did we); she calls it "pretty pathetic." If her make-up is the only thing he can find to mock, we agree. [Politico]

• A new poll shows that more than half of Republicans can't identify who leads their party, and those that can are split between Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and John McCain — only one of whom actually holds a position within the party. [USA Today]
• The problem that rank-and-file Republicans have in identifying a leader might stem from the fact that the Republicans who have actually been elected think that government debt will bring down the Obama Administration. Just like it did Reagan's Administration, guys, amirite? [Politico, NY Times]
• Senator Pat Leahy has chosen July 13th to start confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court, and Republicans are whining about having homework during the week long break they get for July 4th. [NY Times]
• Obama is dropping his plan to cap salaries at bailed-out firms and let them deal with Congressional caps on bonuses, which Congress passed thinking there would also be salary caps. [Wall Street Journal]
• We've decided to pay the impoverished island nation of Palau — which we normally ignore and let the Aussies take care of — $20 million in aid to take the 17 Chinese Uighurs we falsely imprisoned at the behest of the Chinese government and can't figure out what to do with. [NY Times]
• Also, we swear we're not going to invade North Korea the way we did Iraq and Afghanistan. [CNN]
• The Kenyan government is angry that the Obama Administration isn't blowing sunshine up its ass despite its human rights record, unwillingness to reform and political instability. [LA Times]
• Rod Blagojevich, in yet another effort to launch his official career as A Celebrity, will appear in a comedy routine about Rod Blagojevich with Second City in Chicago. [Associated Press]
• Former DNC Chairman and Clintonite Terry McAuliffe lost the 3-way Democratic primary in the Virginia Governor's race to some guy named Creigh that you've never heard of. [MSNBC]

• Last night, Sarah Palin ended up stopping by a Republican fundraiser that she was scheduled to headline, dropped out of and tried to get back into when her 2012 rival, Newt Gingrich, took her slot. [Washington Post]

• Newt Gingrich did plenty of talking, however, offering that he's "happy" Dick Cheney and Colin Powell are Republicans and that he thinks internal debates about policy and ideology should be saved until the party is in the majority again. You know, 'cause that worked so well for moderate Republicans before. [Associated Press]
• One place the GOP has asserted dominance is New York State, where two Democrats with legal problems (Pedro Espada Jr. of the Bronx and Hiram Monserrate of Queens) re-installed the Republican majority in the Senate. Espada is in line to become governor if David Paterson is incapacitated, so it worked out rather nicely for him, if not for the state's LGBT population. [NY Times]
• Former New York Senator Hillary Clinton has told Israel that since the Bush Administration didn't turn over any evidence of their so-called secret arrangement by which Israel would say it had stopped settlement expansion while expanding settlements, there is no such arrangement. [Washington Independent]
• Morgan Tsvangirai, the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe under a power-sharing arrangement with its dictator, Robert Mugabe, will visit with President Obama today. It'll be unseemly to be caught wishing for Mugabe to die already but... [Washington Post]
• South Korea has beaten us in imposing unilateral sanctions on North Korea for all the crazy shit Kim Jong Il's been pulling lately to prove that he hasn't had a stroke and is totally right in the head. [NY Times]
• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's constituents have finally heard about all the crazy shit he says about being surrounded by light from Allah and whatnot, thanks to a political rival. Unsurprisingly, some people in Iran thinks he sounds batshit. [Huffington Post]
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to fuck over the Senate (retribution for all the times it has done the same to her?) and strip out Senator Joe Lieberman's provision that would prevent the release of the rest of the torture photos the ACLU wants. [Politico]
• The Supreme Court plans on reviewing the sale of Chrysler to Fiat, and Congress has decided to try to force Obama to force GM and Chrysler to keep dealerships open despite the fact that the car companies are shuttering entire automobile lines and the dealer networks are increasingly unpopular. You know what the dealers do have? Lots and lots and lots of money to lobby Congress, since they're not bankrupt. [The Hill]

• Stephen Colbert taped his first show from Baghdad yesterday, allowing General Ray Odierno to shave his head, declaring victory and not watering his act down in some insincere effort at sincerity. [NY Times]

• Sarah Palin, while introducing professional conservative Michael Reagan at an event in Alaska, may have paraphrased from a paper written by Newt Gingrich about Ronald Reagan, according to Geoffrey Dunn (who is writing what everyone expects will be an unflattering book about the Alaska Governor). Her lawyers say — correctly — that she actually cited the paper when giving the speech, and some day we'll all realize that specious attacks against Palin sap credibility from the good ones. [CBS, Huffington Post]
• Newt Gingrich isn't calling Judge Sonia Sotomayor a "racist" anymore. He's decided that he'll get in less trouble by just implying she's a racist because the actual racists in America will understand his code. Unfortunately for Newt, so do the rest of us. [Politico]
• He then completed his 180 degree flip-flop by stating that Republicans should "shrug off" ideological purists, by which he means "other ideological purists." [Politico]
• Former First Lady Laura Bush likes Sotomayor, so Rush Limbaugh is preparing a full-throated takedown of her for being uppity and speaking out of turn. Or not. [Associated Press]
• We're apparently about to start stopping North Korean weapons shipments. Umm, I'm not sure that "better late than never" really applies here. [CBS News]
• Hillary Clinton is trying to warn Iran against behaving like North Korea, which will likely be entirely effective. [UPI]
• She now says Obama has passed her "3 a.m." test, and admitted she initially turned down the role of Secretary of State but changed her mind after Obama kept after her. He's one charming motherfucker. [CNN]

• Barack Obama, after his meeting with Angela Merkel, will visit the ruins of the Buchenwald concentration camp. He will likely not compare our re-purposing of Abu Ghraib to the Russian's post-war re-purposing of Buchenwald for political prisoners. [UPI, Huffington Post]

• Obama is heading to France after that, where he's meeting Michelle and the girls. [MSNBC]
• Perhaps he's going in order to help him forget about the crazy guy from Utah trying to assassinate him. [Huffington Post]
• Or the fact that his Attorney General is having to release a bunch more Alaska Republicans convicted of corruption because the prosecution by Bush's Justice Department was even more corrupt than the politicians. [NY Times]
• One of the other corrupt Republicans prosecuted by Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department, Bob Ney, now has a radio show and wants to see Alberto Gonzales waterboarded...to prove it's not really torture, of course. [ThinkProgress]
• During a week when corrupt former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has his wife eating spiders in Costa Rica with Speidi to pay the bills he once fulfilled through bribery, waterboarding Alberto Gonzales doesn't seem that extreme. [Politico]
• My definition of "extreme" may have been altered by reading this recap and review of Glenn Beck's "comedy" tour. [NY Times]
• Judge Sonia Sotomayor's supporting documentation has been delivered to the Senate early, which won't stop Republicans from claiming they don't have enough time to read it before their summer vacations. [MSNBC]
• Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, having locked up the support of most senior Democrats and killed most primary challenges, now says he doesn't know if he'll vote for Sotomayor. Seriously, dude's starting to seem a little crazy, right? [Politico]
• But, with unemployment in America at nearly 10 percent, the one thing Arlen Specter won't do is quit his job. [NY Times]

• Barack Obama gave his long-awaited speech in Egypt this morning, giving a thumbs-up to democracy, a thumbs-down to new Israeli settlements and some recognition to the fact that America fucks up some times. [NY Times]

• Speaking of settlements, the Israelis are saying that Dubya promised them they could build new ones and call it not building new settlements and we'd all be cool. [NY Times]
• Why does Pat Buchanan keep getting on television to spew his crazy racist bullshit? [Huffington Post]
• Dick Cheney wants his daughter Liz to run for office. [ThinkProgress]
• Hillary Clinton thinks the Chinese should come clean as to who they killed and disappeared during the Tiananmen Square protests; the Chinese are, suffice it to say, really not ready to do that. [BBC]
• Obama's talking health insurance mandates. [NY Times]
• Michelle had lunch with Nancy Reagan. [People]
• Big surprise: not even the Obama's marriage was (or is) always awesome or perfect, but they got through it. [MSNBC]
• Senate Republicans, looking to have it both ways, played nice to Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the press while sending their aides to GOP groups to encourage them to keep smearing her. [The Hill]
• Senator Lindsey Graham is just an everyday white dude who is so sad that women and people of color might on equal footing that he's moved to tears...and it'll take an uncomfortably long snuggle with John McCain to make him stop. [Washington Post]

• Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum suggests that Barack Obama, as an example to "African-American males," not take Michelle out on any more fancy dates, but just head to a local bar, throw back a beer, and head home. [Salon]

• Sarah Palin is gearing up for a trip to (honest!) Auburn, New York to celebrate the birth of William Seward, who bought Alaska from those pesky Russians she keeps seeing from her back porch. [Newser]
• Newt Gingrich feels bad for calling Judge Sonia Sotomayor a racist when he just meant to describe every thing she's ever said as racist. [Time]
• In unrelated news, 54 percent of Americans — some of whose votes Gingrich would need to win the Presidency in 2012 — think Sotomayor should be confirmed. Another 19 percent don't care about either Sotomayor or Newt. [LA Times]
• More depressingly, thanks to Dick Cheney, half of Americans think torture is justified. Why be an exception when we can just be as bad as every country, legal system, government and ideology we used to want not to emulate? [MSNBC]
• Both al Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden issued statements about how much Barack Obama sucks upon his arrival in Saudi Arabia earlier today. [UPI, Washington Post]
• Unlike his immediate predecessor, Obama has not held hands with anyone in the Middle East nation. [Washington Post]
• Obama, taking a page from John McCain's erstwhile health care plan, has said he's open to taxing employer-sponsored health insurance. [MSNBC]
• He nominated Republican Congressman John McHugh to be Secretary of the Army, apparently as part of his plan to isolate Republicans and make them seem even crazier. I doubt they need the help! [NY Times, Politico]
• And, with Tim Pawlenty announcing he won't seek a third term as governor of Minnesota, you have to wonder how far up Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's ass he plans to crawl after the Minnesota Supreme Court rules that Norm Coleman still isn't the Senator. [Talking Points Memo]

• Dick Cheney thinks: The Gays should be happy with whatever states choose not to discriminate against them; Americans should be glad George Tenet didn't have worse intel about the link between Saddam and Osama; and the Guantanamo detainees should be happy we didn't summarily execute them. [Time, CNN, MSNBC]

• David Duke is mad at Rush Limbaugh for comparing him to that Latina Sonia Sotomayor. But he's not a racist! [ThinkProgress]
• Dick Cheney wouldn't have nominated Judge Sotomayor, but even Dick Cheney is smart enough not to call her a racistwhile he's trying to rehab his image. [Politico]
• Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, however, is not as smart as Dick Cheney. [Politico]
• Sotomayor begins the obligatory meetings-with-Senators today; let's hope she wore some comfortable shoes. [Politico]
• The Obama Administration denies that any of the images of American detainees subject to the ACLU release lawsuit depict sexual abuse, as was reported last week. Please note the careful wording. [Salon]
• The Administration also says that it decided not to release the photos because Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Malik objected and threatened to force us to withdraw even earlier than he planned, which is not nearly as dirty as it sounds. [McClatchy]
• Tom Tancredo staffer Marcus Epstein is a crazy-ass racist who assaulted a woman on the street last year because she was black, and he won't be going to law school now because of it. [DCeiver]
• Kim Jong Il's son, Kim Jong Un, who is 7 years younger than I am, will be taking over the nuclear-armed country of North Korea. This is gonna go well! [BBC]
• Eliot Spitzer has spent a lot of money on sex workers. [NY Times]
• Norm Coleman has spent a lot of money masturbating to his electoral fantasies in Minnesota courts. [NY Times]
• Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has finally learned how to relax and submit peacefully to our new Chinese overlords. [NY Times]
• You are correct: I have sex on the brain.

• Senate Minorityi Leader Mitch McConnell doesn't think it's his place to stop or chastise prominent Republicans who are running around screaming, "Racist!" at Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Of course, McConnell doesn't think a lot of things are his place, up to and including holding the Republican Senator majority. [ThinkProgress]

• Newly minted Ranking Member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jeff Sessions, wishes Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan would shut the fuck up, because he'd like to screw up Sotomayor's nomination without going down in history as yet another unreconstructed racist Southern Senator. [ThinkProgress]
• South Carolina Senator and John McCain fanboy Lindsey Graham managed to ask Sotomayor for an apology for being prejudiced against him as a white man, earning himself some praise and showing his colleagues how this racism shit is actually done. [The Hill]
• His predecessor, newly minted Democratic Senator Arlen Specter, finally got his lines right and backed Sotomayor's nomination. [AlterNet]
• President Obama thinks the Republicans should shut the fuck up about all of it already. [Washington Post]
• The Chinese government wanted House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi to get with its propaganda program during her visit to China, but she's Nancy Pelosi, so she didn't. [Politico]
• Norm Coleman's getting his hearing in Minnesota's Supreme Court today over his efforts to overturn the electoral will of Minnesotans and stay in the Senate. [Politico]
• The Obama Administration is asking the Supreme Court to uphold lower court rulings that families of 9/11 victims can't sue the Saudi royal family over the attacks. [NY Times]
• GM will file for bankruptcy today in exchange for $30 billion dollars. Where can I sign up for that deal? [The Hill]

• Former Congressman and failed Presidential candidate Tom "I See Brown People" Tancredo yesterday said that Judge Sonia Sotomayor was a member of the Latino KKK, otherwise known as the National Council of La Raza, the oldest political advocacy group for the Latino community. Unmitigated racists, meet your leader. [Politico]

• Texas Senator John Cornyn, who understands the importance of Latino votes in winning his own re-election, thinks that all this racist crap is "terrible." [Huffington Post]
• And even über-Catholic activist and anti-abortion advocate Bill Donohue isn't going to get all up in opposing Sotomayor. [BeliefNet]
• In fact, most Republicans want those who are calling Sotomayor a racist and opposing her to shut the fuck up already. [Politico]
• There must be something new in the Kool-Aid at GOP headquarters, because Dick Cheney sort of apologized to Colin Powell [ThinkProgress]
• Plus, George W. Bush has finally weighed in the torture issue, saying that the practice was effective. [Detroit Free Press]
• North Korea just launched another missile. [CNN]
• They've even annoyed China. [Wall Street Journal]

• Wow: there are apparently conservatives suggesting that Judge Sonia Sotomayor's enjoyment of traditional Puerto Rican food will impact her ability to be a mouth-breathing, lock-step conservative justice in the grand school of Clarence "Oral Arguments Are Nap Times" Thomas. [TalkingPointsMemo]

• And a bunch of racist Republicans, including Newt "Who Needs Latino Voters" Gingrich and Tom "I See Brown People" Tancredo, swear they know one when they see one... and that Sotomayor fits the bill. [Politico, ThinkProgress]
• Pat "The Nazis Weren't That Bad" Buchanan thinks Sotomayor got the nomination because of Affirmative Action, because all white men are obviously more qualified than a Princeton-and-Yale educated appeals court judge! [ThinkProgress]
• Mark Krikorian thinks Sotomayor's a racist for insisting people pronounce her name correctly, and feels discriminated against because he's not allowed to Anglicize it. As someone who refuses to completely Anglicize her name for the likes of anyone — particularly with a name like Krikorian — Mark Corker can go fuck himself. [ThinkProgress]
• Unrelated to fucking: Barack Obama stayed in a really nice luxury suite in Vegas. [People]
• In actually important news, we weren't just torturing prisoners in Iraq, our soldiers were raping them. [Newser]
• Oh, and we're on high alert in South Korea because the North Koreans have threatened to re-start hostilities in the decades-old war. [Washington Post]
• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned Israel to stop building new settlements, and Israel really doesn't care. [NY Times]
• But, hey, Roland Burris is crazy! [LA Times]
• And, Michelle Bachmann's starring in her own comic book, so that's way more important. [TalkingPointsMemo]

• Rush Limbaugh has his big-boy britches in a wad over the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court because she and President Obama are racists for thinking themselves not only equal to white people but superior to some...like Rush Limbaugh. By that standard, we are all racist! [Time]

• We're also superior to Larry Summers, who fell asleep during a motherfucking meeting again. [NY Post]
• Current Illinois Senator Roland Burris (surprise!) bought his sinecure from former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich just like everyone suspected he did. [Wall Street Journal]
• Burris is now departing on a tour of - wait for it - Central Illinois. [Associated Press]
• Obama, however, is headed to Sin City to help out Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, despite the fact that Reid will continue to fuck shit up. [LA Times]
• Apparently, the United States is considering a value added tax (VAT). Don't think that means we'll get to stop paying income taxes, though — the point is not to change the system, but raise more revenues. [Washington Post]
• Economists predict the recession will be over by the end of the year. [MSNBC]
• By then, North Korea might actually have re-ignited the Korean War, which actually never technically ended. What else does Kim Jong Il have to do these days? [NY Times]

• Yale University awarded Secretary of State Hillary Clinton an honorary Doctorate of Law yesterday, after which she spoke to the Law School graduating class. You know some of the undergraduate seniors were pissed. [Associated Press]

• Clinton will soon extend spousal benefits to all domestic partners (same sex or otherwise) of Foreign Service Officers, making other federal employees jealous. [Washington Post]
• One of her predecessors, Colin Powell, is sick of taking shit from Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. [Reuters]
• Karl Rove, for his part, still thinks Dick Cheney rulez and Colin Powell droolz. [Think Progress]
• Seventy percent of Americans disagree with Rove, but what else is new. [Time]
• Oh, and if you were wondering why, other than an Elektra Complex, Liz Cheney is running around kissing her dad's ass and talking about how good torture is for America's moral authority in the world, it's 'cause she's gonna run for office. [ThinkProgress]
• Kim Jong Il shot off a couple of missiles at that news. Then he launched some nukes. [NY Times]
• The RNC can't decide whether it wants to screw Nancy Pelosi or hurt her, but it certainly doesn't want to debate her policies because its full of a bunch of misogynist frat boys jerking off to old James Bond films. [Politico]

• The Justice Department is asking a judge to dismiss the stupid lawsuit trying to prevent Hillary Clinton from serving as Secretary of State because she served in Congress. Clinton is the only former elected official in the Cabinet facing such a lawsuit. [Huffington Post]

• President Obama has voiced his own animatronic robot in Disney's Hall of Presidents; he also gave Disney his real measurements. People are calling the thing, naturally, "Robobama," even though "Robama" is a clearly superior nickname. [NY Times]
• The lifelike animated corpse of the GOP, otherwise known as "Dick Cheney," gave a dick speech about how waterboarding isn't torture and the country is less safe now that we stopped torturing people we think are terrorists into confession. [Washington Post]
• Obama disagrees, thinks Dick Cheney is a dick and that a Supermax prison can probably manage to keep a terrorist from escaping and getting to Iraq to attack our soldiers. [Huffington Post]
• Bush says he likes cleaning up dog shit better than being President. [MSNBC]
• John Kerry doesn't mind Nancy Pelosi accusing the CIA of misleading her, since they did it to him. [Huffington Post]
• The House isn't going to create a bipartisan panel to give Republicans more time on TV to attack Pelosi investigate whether or not the CIA lied to her. [MSNBC]
• Republican Congressman Paul Broun wants to make 2010 the Year of the Bible because 2010 is an election year and he needs to get re-elected despite doing stupid stuff like spending time trying to make 2010 the Year of the Bible. [Politico]
• The RNC thinks that having slavery enshrined in the Constitution was a-okay. Man, they're all really pissed at Michael Steele! [Media Matters]