Lightning Round: How is The Onion Going to Compete with the Freak Show?

• Not one but two taxpayer "bill of rights" were struck down by big majorities on Tuesday, but don't tell that to the "freedom fighters" engaged in performance art on Capitol Hill today. They think health-care reform is like the Holocaust. They think reciting the Pledge of Allegiance pisses off liberals and can't even recite it properly. They tolerate and support conspiracy theorists. They think the culture wars of 40 years ago have salience today. They openly encourage revolution. Frighteningly, they also have the support of prominent Republican members of Congress.
• House Republicans, who have no clue how to promote good public policy, unsurprisingly received a terrible score from the CBO on their version of health-care reform, primarily because it manages to embody Alan Grayson's "don't get sick" characterization. This was understandably difficult for conservatives to handle since it's at odds with their supposed commitment to fiscal discipline, leading Ramesh Ponnuru to find the silver lining: "But are voters more concerned about the effect of a plan on the uninsured and the budget, or on their own costs (in taxes and premiums)?"
• While it is true that the South has had too much influence on national politics for far too long, I don't think that began to change in 2006. In 1980, for instance, a non-Southerner was elected president. A Massachusetts liberal was Speaker of the House at the time, and Reagan defeated a Minnesota technocrat in 1984. Both presidential nominees in 1988 were from New England, even if the Republican made his money in Texas. And despite a Southern Democratic ticket in 1992, and a Georgian being Speaker of the House, the midwestern Republican Senate majority leader ran for president in 1996. Things didn't just suddenly change when Nancy Pelosi rose to the No. 3 position in the country.
• If you're still dying to know whether the special elections of 2009 are a preview of 2010, political science has answers for you. Alternatively, you could read this fine example of substance-free political analysis from Politico, secure in the knowledge that you're cognizant in the cutting edge of Beltway conventional wisdom.
  
• Remainders: Thankfully, Barbara Boxer doesn't care what James Inhofe thinks about climate change; the U.S. Senate has deep institutional problems; I wonder how long it will take Michael Steele to beg Rush Limbaugh's forgiveness; for Dick Armey, parochial concerns aren't important until they are; and clearly Congress should suspend all other business until it gets to the bottom of this unprecedented "czars" situation.

--Mori Dinauer