A top secret operative sends us this video of the line of folks looking to get into Longworth, which is super lengthy. Clearly the guards are ACORN thugs trying to slow down the security process, the bastards. But hey there’s another House office building right across the street, so they will just run back and forth between the two buildings all day trying to find the shortest lines, as one would do at the supermarket check-out. [YouTube]

• Someone accidentally left a document detailing ongoing Congressional ethics violations investigations on a public computer network. The Word paperclip would have advised against this. [Washington Post]
• The deposed president of Honduras has been temporarily undeposed by the de facto government. Legitimacy has been totally restored to government there, clearly. [New York Times]
• The Philadelphia-based (and Boston-based, for that matter) sports enthusiasts did not enjoy last night nearly as much as they did Wednesday night. [Philadelphia Inquirer]
• This Russian tycoon who was forbidden from visiting the US apparently came here twice last year as the personal secret guest of the FBI. [WSJ]
• A Coast Guard plane and a Marine helicopter crashed into each other off the coast of California this morning. Despite this being the exact fantasy of every toy-owning toddler, rescue authorities are concerned.  [AP]
• Rhymey former French president Jacques Chirac will be stand trial for corruption and defend some corrupt-seeming things he did while mayor of Paris. [Times Online]

Watch Republican Congressman Steve LaTourette toss off sassy bon mots interspersed with his A-game impressions of Fran Drescher as an infant. Congress has a two-drink minimum for a reason, people. [via The Awl]

Republican Arizona congressperson Jeff Flake spent the week on a desert island, literally, and someone asked him how this made him feel. Well, truth is, Jeff Flake hasn’t felt like a man since leavin’ the ranch. Nope, it’s impossible to feel like much of a man at all, with this fancy humans-only society-livin’. “I’ve felt like a pansy, I guess, and this made it feel like I was actually doing something again.” Like, he didn’t feel like such a queer again, on account of all the nature and shit. “Congressman Flake didn’t realize that that word can have a negative connotation. He simply meant ‘wimpy.’ He apologizes if anyone took offense to it,” said his spokesperson. Does this look like the face of a pansy to you?? [Ben Smith]

Poor Georgia Congressman and gubernatorial candidate Nathan Deal. He was trying in Congress this one time to make sure that all illegals either show their birth certificates or die, but then the “ghetto grandmothers” complained that they did not have their birth certificates handy. Oh, those old ladies in the ghetto! Deal has apologized, but had a very important serious point, okay? [YouTube, AJC]

• This new tax credit thing for businesses that make up new jobs is not entirely despised by everyone in Congress. Even Eric Cantor is like, whatever! [New York Times]
• But speaking of “entirely despised by everyone in Congress”: Obama’s Afghanistan strategy. [Washington Post]
• NASA has discovered an enormous invisible (?) ring around Saturn that’s the size of 1 billion Earths. Next step will be for them to make the case for why we need to blow it up. [CNN]
• The Taliban in Afghanistan say they have no interest in killing Westerners. Swear to god you guys! [Reuters]
• The Supreme Court will now decide whether YouTube videos of animal cruelty count as free speech or whether they should be banned forever. [WSJ]
• And two more Americas (+ 1 Israeli) won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for something about ribosomes, which sounds suspiciously like that thing the Medicine people did. [LA Times]

Who’s someone people like? The Sullenberger guy, Chesley B. Sully Sullenberger, who became famous for not crashing an airplane last summer or whenever it was. Anyway, coincidentally, you know who the Republicans decided would make a great new congressman from California? So reports The Hill, with signature Cheeky Juxtaposition: “Republicans hoped the hero who saved all 155 of his flight’s passengers and crew by landing in the Hudson could help them retake a seat that long had been in the GOP’s control.” MORE »

If there’s a single winner tonight, it’s the photo to your left. The fact that one can type “old-timey doctor” into something called “Google Images” and produce THIS… what a great country. No. What a great Internet. None of this is true. But we digress! Health care speech: Obama started a full 900 million seconds late, so let’s listen to the second and third paragraphs of his speech hmm? (Part I, Part II) MORE »

At this actual moment a bunch of congressmen and senators are getting high in their offices before sitting down to listen to this nut, Obama, try to explain yet again why he wants to kill, literally murder with jackknives and poisons and AIDS, the Greatest Generation & babies. Is that any kind of “good” public policy? Doesn’t he know that they do this in Europe, which is stagnant? He loves Europe. Anyway let’s see what the dingbats are saying on cable news, in this very important pre-speech liveblog. MORE »

• A special “Welcome Back” to America’s congress, Congress, who have just returned from the least fun recess ever. They will now be expected to figure out a health care plan for a citizenry who insist that eating each other’s limbs is an effective means by which to debate health care plans. [Washington Post]
• People who know about such things disagree over whether sending more ground forces to Afghanistan will prevent future terrorist attacks or whether the key is doing a grassroots thing, whereby the Afghans learn to hate terrorism on their own. [New York Times]
• Oh good: jobless Americans have taken to forming quasi ad-hoc local militia supplements to our country’s police forces. [Wall Street Journal]
• Macaroni virtuosos Kraft Foods will purchase Cadbury, they of the Eggs, whether Cadbury likes it or not. [Reuters]
• Joe Kennedy II will not be running for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, making the race a novel Kennedy-less one so far. [Los Angeles Times]
• Three British men were convicted on charges of unsuccessful terrorism for their botched plan to blow up seven North America-bound planes. [AP]

What can Obama do about this health care bill now! Such gridlock, heading into this high-stakes autumnal session of Congress: the liberals want one kind of bill, the moderates want another kind that pretends to cut spending but really just spends a lot more, and the conservatives want no bill, unless it’s a 100% cap gains tax cut and nothing else. How will Obama heal all of these paid-off factions? With a speech before a joint session of Congress! Oh, he’s going there. This is big. One week from today. U.S. Capitol. Midnight. (No it will be like 8/7 ET or whatever.) [CNN]