Apropos of my post from Saturday, I should point out that on Meet the Press yesterday, Lindsey Graham appeared to put the Man Who Would Kill Immigration Reform in the closet — at least for now: SEN. GRAHAM: Well, I’m just being honest. I’m going to work with Chuck Schumer to come up with legislation [...]

Serious question for Republicans: How much longer are you guys going to keep using the old “Stop figuring out ways around our obstruction or we will continue to obstruct, which we were planning on doing anyway” threat? Doesn’t seem people are taking it too seriously. On a related note, Ezra Klein has a great piece [...]

Ryan Avent has a pair of great posts on how smart phones changes the dynamic of living in cities or using transportation. Read them here and here. One thing I would add is to his second post (which is the second link): It’s also worth pointing out that smartphones and their apps are making being [...]

I’d be remiss if Ididn’t point out this extremely disturbing story from yesterday’s Washington Post: In a Feb. 22 memo, James M. Chaparro, head of ICE detention and removal operations, wrote that, despite record deportations of criminals, the overall number of removals was down. While ICE was on pace to achieve “the Agency goal of [...]

lolz: Stuffed down in the expense reports for one of RNC sachem Michael Steele’s recent trips is almost two grand spent at a trendy West Hollywood club known for topless dancers simulating lesbian sex (and also just topless dancers simulating women with exposed breasts). The RNC notes that it wasn’t Steele but a staffer who [...]

Dylan‘s new WKM piece is–as Dara said–excellent. But because I’m a blogger, and quibbling is what I know, I’m going to quibble with a tangential point he raises in the last paragraph. He says: Furthermore, Obama’s campaign proposal to grant a $4,000 tuition tax credit to students who engage in service is borderline disturbing. The [...]

Over at Wunderkammer (which y’all should continue to read even when snot-nosed Attackerman guestbloggers are no longer shoving links in your faces every few days), Dylan Matthews goes hard against Teach for America and other institutions of “service liberalism” which have turned into the “ground army of Clintonesque neoliberalism.” To wit: Taking service seriously, service [...]

While I’m on the subject of punk (or punk-inflected rock, anyway): any of you folks who like the Gaslight Anthem should check this band out. They’ve got roughly the same sort of thing going insofar as they’re all about combining earnest, soaring Bruce Springsteen ballads with a dash of punk rock grit. Incidentally, the first [...]

Last week, Jamelle (who is a friend of this blog and a friend of mine, and who you should totally hire) wrote: At present, the Senate is actually working on an immigration bill. And as the Prospect’s Gabriel Arana details, the Schumer-Graham blueprint for immigration reform is a problematic and half-hearted attempt that doesn’t actually [...]

My guestbloggers have been doing an admirable job of supplying the “real talk” promised in Spencer’s banner–but where the hell’s the punk rock? We’ve got a huge punk deficit here, but lucky for you there is at least one form of aggressive deficit reduction I can get behind. I can’t match your regularly scheduled blogger’s [...]