Stan Collender, who writes the economics blog “Capital Gains and Games,” slams Republicans for abandoning their concern for the deficit as soon as the election was over:

That’s actually a massive understatement. According to a lengthy analysis in the New York Times, the latest batch of diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks reveal that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has become a “global intelligence organization with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies. …” (Emphasis is mine.)

Ralph Hall, Republican member of Congress from Texas, and incoming chair of the House Science and Technology Committee, commenting on the BP oil rig explosion:

Should people who don’t make enough income to pay income taxes have to pay income taxes?

Glenn Greenwald has a must-read piece today about a journalistic scandal at Wired involving multiple undisclosed conflicts of interest that appear to have led to blatantly misleading coverage of Army PFC Bradley Manning’s alleged passing on of classified documents to Wikileaks:

The draconian conditions under which Army PFC Bradley Manning has been held for seven months — first in Kuwait and after that at Quantico, Virginia, where he has been kept in almost complete solitary confinement for five months, with no end in sight — connect to any number of constitutional issues, from government secrecy to torture. Some of these issues have sparked more discussion than others, and one that, in my view, has not received as much media attention as it should is the issue...

From BBC News:

Major points in Glenn’s piece:

Here’s some news:

Back in May, I wrote here at TMV about a Roman Catholic nun who was excommunicated for approving an abortion that was necessary to save the life of the mother.

Recently, an MIT researcher named David House interviewed Army PFC Bradley Manning at the Quantico, Virginia, brig where he has been detained for five months, following two months of confinement in Kuwait. The interview (conducted under severely restrictive conditions, which House describes at the end of the article), contradicts in many important respects the account given by officials at the Pentagon and at Quantico, as well as in the stenographic accounts published by major news organizations...

Sen. Coburn is the one who was threatening to put a hold on the bill so it could not come to a vote. So how does the Senate’s passage of the bill become a win for Coburn? Here’s how:

Why has Congress gotten so much done over the lame duck session? Well, first, because Republicans decided to stop blocking everything and start cooperating (not all or even most Republicans, of course, but more than zero, which is enough in most cases — especially in the Senate, where many a threatened filibuster could have been ended if just the handful of moderate Republicans in that body had voted for cloture.

“Health services.”

For the mainstream right, now, the Tenth Amendment trumps the Fourteenth Amendment:

Andrew Kreig writes in The Huffington Post:

David Coombs, the attorney representing Army PFC Bradley Manning, has a detailed description on his blog of what a typical day is like for Bradley Manning (emphasis is added; the italicized text is my commentary):

The bill does not have anything to do with abortion and does not appropriate any new funding, but House Republicans used both of those boogeymen to ensure its failure to pass in the House (h/t Echidne):

Sen. Bob Corker threatened to kill START if Senate Democrats went forward with the DADT repeal legislation (emphasis is mine):

When you’re sure you’ve had enough of this life, well hang on.