Now that CB mentions it, let’s put it up on the board…

There may be a fascinating Con Law seminar on the subject, but in our lifetime “states’ rights” (which, to be fair, Paul doesn’t mention by name) has predominantly meant one thing, and we’re not the first to find it curious that the “secession” issue turns up soon after the nation’s first black president has been inaugurated.

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Let’s try this again:

Fox News is polling its online readers over whether Miss California was right when she told Billy Bush she was denied the Miss USA crown Sunday night after she answered judge Perez Hilton that “marriage should be between a man and a woman.”

Nope. We still can’t wrap our head around it.

Carrie Prejean Says Answer to Gay Marriage Question Cost Her Miss USA Crown [Fox News]

ThinkProgress has a petition to urge the House to open impeachment hearings for Judge Jay S. Bybee.  You can sign it here if you think it’ll do any good.

ThinkProgress is sending a petition to the members of the House Judiciary Committee — where 1impeachment articles are drawn — imploring them to act now to remove Bybee from public office. Please join our efforts by signing onto our campaign.

Abolish the IRS! Your vote will be counted! Well, after we collect 99 cents.

IRS Vote [via Sully]

Nixon: Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.

Frost: By definition.

Nixon: Exactly. Exactly. If the president, for example, approves something because of the national security, or in this case because of a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude, then the president’s decision in that instance is one that enables those who carry it out, to carry it out without violating a law. Otherwise they’re in an impossible position.

Nixon’s Views on Presidential Power: Excerpts from an Interview with David Frost [Landmark Supreme Court Cases]

Official: Obama doesn’t want interrogation charges [AP/TPM]

Ruh-roh:

Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.

* * *

In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.

Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”

Jane, Jane, in George W. Bush’s America your conversations are forever.

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Courtesy of Rotten.com, a list of available names for the next faux-populist protest. We invite you to select a symbol and provide an appropriate issue to match.

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