Via Digby, time for the Beltway to prepare the fainting couch:

Speaking for me only

Nicholas Marsh, age 37, was one of the prosecutors in the Ted Stevens case. He and other prosecutors in the case have been under investigation for misconduct due to their withholding of evidence in the case. Yesterday, Marsh committed suicide.

Marsh's lawyer, Robert Luskin (yes, also Karl Rove's former lawyer), says the investigation was coming to a close and he would have been shocked had Marsh not been exonerated.

After Attorney General Eric Holder moved to dismiss Stevens' convictions, the Judge appointed Washington attorney Henry Schuelke to investigate the actions of the prosecutors. Marsh was transferred from the Public Integrity Section to the Office of International affairs during the investigation.

How sad that at age 37, Mr. Marsh thought suicide was his best option. I hope there was some other reason besides the potential fear of losing his job.

Via Real Aspen, Gen. Stanley McChrystal was in Aspen this weekend, for a private Forstmann Little & Company conference. He was interviewed for over an hour by Charlie Rose.

The two were seated on a small stage in an open-air tent in front of a rich and powerful crowd that included Martha Stewart, Peter Ueberroth, Monica Seles, David Stern, Karl Rove, George Lucas, Daniel Snyder, Julian Robertson, Michael Ovitz, Alan Greenspan, Andrea Mitchell, Chris Mathews, Michael Eisner, Padma Lakshmi and Ted Forstmann, the Forstmann Little co-founder and IMG CEO who hosted the event.

Among his comments about Afghannistan:

“Right now, it doesn't exist,” said McChrystal, noting the perpetual state of civil war that has embroiled the country ever since the late 1970s. “Afghanistan is in some kind of post-apocalyptic nightmare.”

[More...]

The Obama Administration intends to introduce a bill next year that will make it easier for feds to wiretap your internet communications.

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

[More...]

AP:

Most Americans simply don't apply for jobs harvesting fruits and vegetables in California, where one of every eight people is out of work, according to government data for a federal seasonal farmworker program analyzed by The Associated Press.

And the few unemployed Americans who apply through official channels usually don't stay on in the fields, a point comedian Stephen Colbert — dressed as a field hand — has alluded to in recent broadcasts on Comedy Central.

Anyone familiar with farm work can tell you - it is impossibly taxing physically. No one would wish it on their kids.

Speaking for me only

There is no social security crisis. Tell Congress not to make changes.

Alan Simpson (R-WY), the Republican co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, and other commission members want to cut benefits, raise the retirement age, and push working Americans into private accounts.

Via MoveOn: The Top Five Social Security Myths: [More...]

Last week, I wrote a post noting that in order for the health bill to be even what its most ardent supporters claim it is, it would need to survive assaults on its provisions from Republicans. I argued that the structure of the law made it particularly vulnerable to Republican retrenchment and that the argument that it would become more popular and be harder to deconstruct over time was faulty because the law as structured did not create a powerful constituency. I then pointed to the fact that Republicans were already diagramming how to attack the progressive features of the bill. In purporting to disagree with my post, John Cole mischaracterized my point - which was that the health bill was not structured in a way to be transformatively progressive, as asserted by strong health bill supporters. For example, Matt Yglesias argued:

Paul Krugman ably tackles the issue:

[W]hat should we be seeing if [structural unemployment existed]? The answer is, there should be significant labor shortages somewhere in America — major industries that are trying to expand but are having trouble hiring, major classes of workers who find their skills in great demand, major parts of the country with low unemployment even as the rest of the nation suffers. None of these things exist.

Let me add a common sense observation - in September 2008, the unemployment rate, after a steady rise, was 6.1%. In August 2009, just a year later, the unemployment rate was 9.8%. To believe that this rise was a result of structural unemployment is to accept that the American economy became completely dislocated in terms of its labor market in just 12 months. The precipitous drop in demand and the financial meltdown were not the cause in the rise in unemployment but merely the result of structural unemployment. This would be an event without precedent in economic history. It simply is false.

Speaking for me only

Exhibit A for why the Dems will get creamed in November, Steny Hoyer:

WALLACE: Why not pass the extension of the middle-class tax cuts before you go home to campaign for a month?

HOYER: The obstruction is in the Senate. Well, it would be a specious act for us. [. . .] But what we have -- what is not a specious act, Chris, is we have absolutely guaranteed that there will be no increase in middle-income taxes. The president's that. The speaker and I have said that. Harry Reid and Dick Durbin have said that. There will be no increase...

Sheesh.

Speaking for me only

Sunday!

Open Thread.

Saturday Night Live is back. Amy Poehler guest hosts tonight, with Katy Perry as the musical guest.

There's a Christine O'Donnell parody about mastur** (you can watch here) and New York Gov. David Paterson, a frequent target of the show, will be on. What does he have to say?

"Working in Albany is like watching SNL: a lot of characters, it's funny for 10 minutes & then you just want it over." -Gov Patterson

Amy Poehler and Seth Myers do the weekend update.

Last year, Georgia criminal defense attorney Mark Shelnutt was acquitted on charges of conspiring to launder money, 31 counts of money laundering, aiding and abetting a drug conspiracy, lying to federal agents, intimidating a grand jury witness, failing to report cash transactions over $10,000 and the attempted bribery of a federal prosecutor. He then sued the Government under the Hyde Act to recover his attorneys' fees.

Law enforcement didn't give up. Now, Georgia authorities have arrested him. The charges: eight felony counts of drug distribution. What did he do? Over a two month period, he gave 11 prescription pills to a long time friend, who happened to be working as a government informant. One percocet, 8 zanax and 2 hydrocodone pills, on 7 separate occasions.