LIGHTNING ROUND: THE PARANOID STYLE.

• Regardless of widespread support for a public option in health care reform reflected in various polls, Paul Krugman is correct to note in his column that the issue isn't Republican intransigence in the face of a receptive public, but instead dealing with "centrist" Democrats in the Senate who are busy protecting their local monopolies. Nate Silver has some useful statistical analysis which bolsters this last point.
• Nobody could have predicted that trying to use the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court as a base-rallying "political lightning rod" would pay few dividends to a Republican party trying to cope with its diminished status. Instead, the tactic has helped turn the fastest growing demographic in the country away from the GOP. They really are incapable of seeing themselves through the eyes of someone who isn't a while male conservative who feels victimized.
  
• The CBO scored the Waxman-Markey climate change bill and found that unlike GOP agitprop claiming the legislation would cost American families $3,000 per year, the impact would be at most $175 per family per year -- in 2020. Meanwhile the RNC is sending candles to Congress, warning members that the legislation will "tax our lights out." I smell another "drill baby drill" Twitter party in the works...
  
• Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio seems to think that if Iran's constitution had a Second Amendment, "the situation would be a little different." Yeah, I guess states do tend to roll over when citizens threaten armed insurrection. In related Iran policy news, Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) shows off his mind-reading abilities by claiming that "They [Iranian protesters] want us, they are appealing to us to recognize it [electoral fraud]."
  
• Back during the presidential campaign, one couldn't say for certain whether the more outlandish accusations leveled at Barack Obama were true beliefs or simply designed to sow doubt in the public. Well, we can now say definitively that The Corner's Andy McCarthy, a leader in this genre, actually believes that Obama is "steeped in Leftist ideology, fueled in anger and resentment" and that he secretly supports the Mullahs over Iran's "freedom fighters."
• Weekend Remainders: Governor Mark Sanford is missing; the CIA delays release of the torture report; Meghan McCain's opinion is still, inexplicably, solicitied; a birther gets an extended profile; and the Congressional Sovereignty Caucus ought to be a hoot.

--Mori Dinauer