Discover GOP Opprobrium

[teapeebubbles]

Today's edition of quick hits:

* A calculated revelation: "North Korea showed a visiting American nuclear scientist earlier this month a vast new facility it secretly and rapidly built to enrich uranium, confronting the Obama administration with the prospect that the country is preparing to expand its nuclear arsenal or build a far more powerful type of atomic bomb."

* On a related note, North Korea officials are arguing that it's simply trying to build nuclear power plants. No one believes them.

* Ireland formally applied for a rescue package yesterday. It's likely to total $109 billion to $123 billion U.S.

* Insider trading: "The FBI raided three hedge funds in connection with a widening probe into insider trading, the Wall Street Journal said on Monday."

* Another installment of the White House White Board, this time featuring Nancy-Ann DeParle explaining the medical-loss ratio in an easy-to-understand way. (Dear WH staff, please keep doing these. Maybe they'll one day be considered the fireside chats of the Obama era?)

* If conservatives are hoping to exploit the families of victims of the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa to push for more military commissions, the right will apparently be disappointed.

* Motor Trend's Todd Lassa did a very nice job making Rush Limbaugh look like a buffoon (yes, even more so than usual).

* Add "Social Security policy" to the list of things Eric Cantor (R-Va.) pretends to understand but doesn't.

* That food safety bill we've been waiting for might still pass, but the vote has been delayed to next week.

* Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) is still the target of multiple investigations, and may yet face criminal charges, but the hush money his parents paid his mistress' family has been cleared by the Federal Election Commission.

* Matt Yglesias: "Worth noting that [incoming House Budget Committee Chairman] Paul Ryan is a dangerous madman, with monetary views well to the right of Milton Friedman."

* Jon Chait referred to today's GOP this morning as "an intransigent and largely insane party."

* Edward Luce, a reporter for The Financial Times, believes there is "a greater hatred of Obama" among congressional Republican "than there is a love of American national security."

* Rebooting Buffy strikes me as a remarkably bad idea. Rebooting Buffy without Joss Whedon strikes me as a spectacularly bad idea.

* MSNBC giving Lawrence O'Donnell a show was clearly a good idea.

* I don't want to alarm anyone, but Newt Gingrich really does lie a lot.

* The number of online courses is growing rapidly. Whether these courses are any good is a separate matter entirely.

* And you may have heard rumors about the TSA "strip searching" a young boy at the Salt Lake City International Airport. The "story" made the rounds after a Drudge push, but it's total nonsense. Someday, news outlets will stop taking Drudge stories seriously, but that I'm afraid that day is nowhere in sight.