“A Republican lawmaker in New York who has a record of voting against medical marijuana legalization has been arrested and charged with possession of marijuana. State police said that a suspicious odor was noticed in Assemblyman Steve Katz’s vehicle when they pulled him over for driving around 80 mph in a 75 mph zone at around 10 a.m. Thursday morning.” [Raw Story]

“Former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is joining the American Enterprise  Institute, the conservative think tank announced Monday. Lieberman will serve as co-chairman of the American Internationalism Project,  alongside former Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).” [The Hill]

“Will the lever voting machine never die? Though New York nixed the old machines a few years ago, they’ve still got them lying around, and now a few senators are pushing to get them reinstated for this year’s mayoral election. Yesterday, four senators proposed a law that would allow the Board of Elections to use the old voting machines instead of the new electronic ballots. The senators say they’re concerned the new machines wouldn’t be able to tally votes and be retested fast enough to handle the 14-day turnaround period between a primary and run-off mayoral election.” [Gothamist]

A bunch of readers have asked us: What’s up with Rand Paul doing an actual filibuster this afternoon on the Senate floor?  And why aren’t you guys all over it? Well, by the ironies of the modern filibuster, this one has lots of fireworks and looks like what a lot of people think a filibuster should look like.  But it’s precisely because this one actually has no teeth that they’re resorting to the old fashioned system.  … Thus far, he’s enlisted Sens. Lee and Cruz to assist him with short breaks. [TPM]

Awwww …

This should be fun:

memeorandum

Shake that Etch-a-Sketch:

[Gene Sperling] assumed, in other words, that Woodward would not do his job. This was an oversight.

This is no tempest in a teapot but rather the leak in the dike. Drip by drip, the Obama administration has demonstrated its intolerance for dissent and its contempt for any who stray from the White House script. Yes, all administrations are sensitive to criticism, and all push back when such criticism is deemed unfair or inaccurate. But no president since Richard Nixon has demonstrated such overt contempt for the messenger. And, thanks to technological advances in social media, Obama has been able to bypass traditional watchdogs as no other president has.

It’s as if the Bush administration never even happened.

Why the ‘Threat’ on Bob Woodward Matters [WaPo]