Lightning Round: The Wages of Cynicism.

• It might not be as amusing as a practical joke, but according to Politico, the Obama administration is planning to deal with the Chamber of Commerce with the time-honored tactic of cutting out the middleman. This shows a White House that is very flexible with how it neutralizes opposition. The CoC approach obviously would not have worked on, say Fox News. Nor would it work against right-wing lobbying groups like the NRA.
• What's annoying about conservatives and libertarians who blithely dismiss the existence of an extremist right-wing fringe is that they're deliberately ignoring evidence to the contrary. When the Secret Service suddenly starts investigating an "unprecedented" number of threats against the president, perhaps one ought to take seriously the effect the current political climate has on those who have given up on the political system.
• David Frum suggests that conservative entertainers whose private and public beliefs once clashed synchronized them out of convenience and predicts which of them would play for the other team if the incentives were good enough. I'm skeptical. Some of the people he name-checks probably started out as opportunists, but there had to be a kernel of belief that motivated them to become conservative rather than liberal entertainers in the first place. And now they've moved beyond opportunism into full-fledged conservative brands. To accommodate the switch they would have to engineer a full-fledged public political conversion that, frankly, would be impossible to believe.
• Weekend Remainders: Michael Steele has his finger on the pulse of America; Kevin Drum expects a highly consequential tenure for Hillary Clinton as secretary of State; eliminating the payroll "tax" is a really bad idea; the 2010 Republican wave will presumably be funded with monopoly money; National Review continues its slide into an unfunny conservative version of the Harvard Lampoon with its latest cover; and Ayn Rand is so awesome that she'll posthumously eliminate India's caste system.

--Mori Dinauer