Seeing as how Spencer is returning very soon — if not already — this will be my final post of the week. Thanks to Spencer for letting me and Dara take over his space for a bit, and thanks to everyone for tolerating our punditry! If you’re so inclined, you

I think Politico has the wrong angle with regards to this story about the good chunk of cash the Obama campaign took from BP, scourge of the Gulf Coast: While the BP oil geyser pumps millions of gallons of petroleum into the Gulf of Mexico, President Barack Obama and members

Ezra Klein isn’t convinced that the iPad has enough storage space to do what its supposed to do: Here’s what I don’t understand about the iPad: How can the memory on it possibly be sufficient? The maximum-memory model has 64 gigabytes of storage. I don’t have a particularly large music

Kevin Drum posts this nifty chart and asks “why do Republicans support the preferred policies of the rich so reliably, when that support isn’t reciprocated?” He offers several possibilities, including the suggestion that this data is unrepresentative, and the rich do actually support Republicans “pretty heavily.” And for what it’s

This isn’t really my beat, but it strikes me as silly to suggest — as New York Times’ Helene Cooper does — that President Obama needs to “mend fences” with the American Jewish community: The White House effort, which included remarks by senior White House officials before the national leadership

As a UVA alum, and someone interested in these issues, I just want to quickly second Amanda Hess’ criticism of the University of Virginia’s reaction to the violent killing of fourth-year student Yeardly Love (via Kay Steiger): UVA police have instructed students how to avoid and/or respond to the following:

I honestly can’t be snarky enough about this WaPo editorial by NYU graduate student Thomas Chatterton Williams: Like neurotics obsessed with amputating their own healthy limbs, middle-class blacks concerned with “keeping it real” are engaging in gratuitously self-destructive and violently masochistic behavior. Sociologists have a term for this pathological facet

Via Adam Serwer, here is Rep. Eric Cantor commenting on the failed Times Square bombing and the administration’s response: Cantor complained that the public “goes on heightened alert” after such incidents for “hours and days rather than permanently” and that Obama aides “tend to give these warnings due attention only

Eugene Robinson’s column this morning, on the facts of Arizona’s “problem” with illegal immigration, is a must-read (and I use that term sparingly): Border crossings by undocumented immigrants have declined sharply over the past decade. With more Border Patrol agents on duty than ever before, apprehensions of would-be immigrants along

Adam Serwer is a little uncomfortable with President Obama’s ‘predator drones” joke at this weekend’s White House Correspondents Dinner: So you have to wonder why in the world the president’s speech writers would think it was a good idea to throw a joke about predator drones into the president’s speech