Rogue ophthalmologist Rand Paul has been a disheveled weirdo for the entirety of his political career, because the apple does not fall far from the tree of liberty, but last night he won the hearts of many people on Twitter because he was up most of the night reading blogs aloud as part of a filibuster against Barack Obama's pick for the new CIA chief. (The last CIA chief resigned over sexting.)

The moral issue of drone assassins is very important, and there are obvious constitutional and police-state issues both domestically and internationally, but this is less a political shift than a technological evolution. Remotely controlled flying war machines [...]

While the Republicans in Congress were distracted by Benghazi and tax cuts and being crazy old men, Barack Obama stealthily created a new national park in California. Is this the beginning of the Obama Administration's bold action on the environment and climate change, which until now hasn't been bold at all? Maybe.

Pinnacles National Park was also signed into existence over the lines of an existing national monument dating back to 1908, when Republicans were the environmentalists. The ragged volcanic landscape and habitat for the humongous (and critically endangered) California Condor runs along the San Andreas Fault, 80 miles southeast of San Francisco. But because [...]

"Shortly before 6 p.m., near the end of a two-hour debate on the plan, Republicans halted the proceedings, and Democrats claimed that Mr. Boehner was still short of the votes he needed.

At 6:50 p.m., the leaders stopped all business on the floor, where the House had worked through a list of post offices to be renamed, and called a"—Wait, what's that? Post office renaming? Oh yes. Lots of what our government does is rename post offices, actually! This year alone, "50 bills to rename post offices have been introduced. Three of those bills have made it to the president’s desk, representing a full 13 percent of [...]

There's several proven tactics to conducting a press conference with humiliating personal admissions and one of them is exhausting everyone, which was pretty successful with Anthony Weiner's confession of sharing "personal photos" with women he did not know (six in three years, most before his marriage) online. Everyone was exhausted, except maybe the New York Post's Andrea Peyser, who really, really wanted to know where his wife Huma was. (At least that's what she kept screaming.)

But the press conference also ran counter to many of the prevailing ideas about crisis PR: one is to keep it short; another is have your wife with you. (The Spitzer event did [...]

It’s hard to say in what, exactly, our elected representatives believe. Oh, this Congress got all sorts of attention for running, and winning, on a tea partyish platform of ideological purity, but when it comes to belief belief—in the cosmic stuff, last things and first scriptural principles—they’re a distinctly squishy bunch.

They are, like the country they represent, majority Protestant, according to a new study by the Pew Forum for Religion and Public Life. But as is the case with the country’s broader Protestant profile, it’s hard to say what, beyond a general feel-good affinity for Jesus, that faith entails. Not surprisingly, the 112th Congress includes stronger [...]

Yes, indeed, that was a truly bizarre episode of Stephen Colbert, Congressional immigration expert.

It might seem like the self-destructive mob known as the Tea Party was a brief living nightmare from 2010 that was handily smacked back into its grave by Barack Obama's epic 2012 re-election win, which also saw Democrats again winning the Senate with a two-seat gain and the House GOP majority losing eight seats. Democrats actually won 1.4 million votes more than Republicans in the House, the first time since 1996 that the GOP held the House while losing the vote count.

But this is the kind of talk that has long distanced liberal media elitists from the Tea Party faithful. While the straggling and embarrassing remains of the Tea [...]

It's all happening today! The race of the century! Today in the 5th, 6th, 7th, the 8th, the 9th, the 13th, the 16th, it is primary day for Congressional seats and stuff. SO I KNOW you're busily hitting the polls today.

BUT MOSTLY THE 8TH! Where Jerrold Nadler has been shunted over to the 10th, the new district created to gerrymander poor people or whatever, I have no idea. (We lost two seats in redistricting is what happened. And like, the 10th is approximately one million percent Democratic.) Anyway, leaving it open for fun people to run, like today's face-off between the stunningly handsome Hakeem Jeffries and [...]

20. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR)

19. Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL)

18. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)

17. Rep. Diane Black (R-TN)

16. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS)

15. Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-CA)

14. Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC)

13. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT)

I just figured if I ignored it, it would all go away, and by "it" I mean Congressperson Anthony Weiner's digitized genitalia and the Internet trumpeting thereof. But the "story" is zooming well into week two, and one website, which is at this point entirely composed of Weiner alleged naked pic news, is going the extra mile with a promised all-day rollout of new pictures allegedly sent by Weiner to a lady constituent. (Just kidding: I think she lives out of his district.) So if you're inclined to play along with this spectacle as news, it seems to be beginning here. Why not? If you'd like to participate [...]

"These guys ran against Washington, but they ran against the bad parts of Washington—the bloated bureaucracy and Nancy Pelosi's agenda. That's not a contradiction to take money from a trade group or corporation that represents free-enterprise principles." —Andrew Theodore, fundraising consultant, explaining the flurry of debt-retirement fundraisers in D.C. for the GOP freshmen class. Those free-enterprise supporting corporations include Rolls-Royce, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, Yum Brands, Delta Airlines, K&L Gates (the lobbyists) and the National Automotive Dealers Association PAC.

Who ever would have thought that the Democratic-majority Congress would be a nest of snaky, wussy morons? For the first time in ever, a White House is actually about to fix our idiot healthcare system-except the majority party is scared it'll offend the Republicans. Meanwhile, they are dicking about with various environmental bills, ensuring that their various constituents, whether they be farmers or oil companies, get exactly what they want. Which means, in the end, nothing. But at least the American Petroleum Institute will be happy! Ugh they are all making me into a Libertarian, how unfortunate.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, distinguished guests, fellow Americans, and even you, Mr. President:

On this fortuitous evening, we come together in a highly ritualized, deeply esoteric sacred performance within the inner sanctum of our nation's high temple. The president's words will be parsed by an inverse pyramid of humanity, from a mass of dimwitted Politico commenters bobbing like frantic ill-informed ducks upon the surface to the industrial sludge filters at the bottleneck bottom, monstrous catfish like Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzer, slurping up and then expelling the reactions to the president's prepared text, which have already become worn out punchlines on Twitter.

At home, the citizens [...]

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My office was invaded by the Occupy Protesters today & all I saw were $1000 laptops & vomit on the carpet. Thank God for #febrezeWed Dec 07 03:49:02 via TweetDeckRep. Joe WalshRepJoeWalsh

I'll just leave this here. Oh, okay, how about a review of Joe Walsh's work activity this year, his first in Congress? Well, it's pretty amazing actually.

Everyone's been paying a lot of attention to one member of Congress these last two weeks, and next to none about the ones we should really be worried about. Let's start with David Rivera, recently cleared by the FEC for paying a third party to run attack ads, but what about everything else, it is pointed out today? Such as: half a million dollars from a dog track? The amended financial disclosure forms, after his reports that attributed his income to USAID were rebutted by… USAID? Also, yes, there is that time that his car somehow ran down an opponent's truck that was carrying fliers that [...]

14. Maxine Waters

13. Raul Labrador

12. Daniel Coats

11. Phil Roe

10. Jeff Flake

9. Edolphus Towns

8. Emanuel Cleaver

7. Dave Camp

"The White House made the case on Thursday that cutting off unemployment benefits would actually result in hundreds of thousands of more unemployed Americans." Ooh, hundreds of thousands? That's all you've got to scare Republicans into extending unemployment? Nice try! I mean, only 40 million people benefitted from unemployment since December 2007. (That's 14 million recipients, plus their households.) Besides, last week 436,000 applied for unemployment. Which is actually not far off from the two-year low! So what's a few hundred thousand more unemployed people?