• UNEMPLOYED WILL SOON BE THE RICHEST OF ALL! The Senate just passed a procedural motion to bring a bill extending unemployment benefits to a floor vote, finally, after weeks of terrible Republican ACORN amendment obstruction. Just stave off the starvation a little bit longer, welfare queens, because soon enough you’ll be able to eat those fine mink coats that you’ll buy with your unemployment money! The procedural motion passed 97 to 1. Try to guess the asshole before clicking. [CQ]

• Maurice R. Greenberg, the impossibly geriatric former head of AIG, has been quietly luring young, unsuspecting insurance execs to his new firm. [New York Times]
• Harry Reid promised out loud that the new health care bill will have a public option, which means it actually might! [Washington Post]
• Like half an hour ago, NASA sent the the largest rocket ever (327 ft.) into space. The moon was unharmed. [CNN]
• Starting nowish, a Senate committee will meet for the next three days in order to figure out some tenable clean energy initiatives. It’s bipartisan, because look: Lamar Alexander! [Reuters]
• Over the last three days, 700 adults were arrested in sweeping sex-with-children raids that spanned 36 cities. [Los Angeles Times]
• The Somali pirates not only continue to exist if everyone pretty much ignores them, they also apparently continue to kidnap British people. [Times Online]

So after Obama’s gay rights speech on Sunday, this LGBT White House person suggested that maybe everyone would try hitching a repeal of DADT to Joe Lieberman, a grape that rolled under a couch like 50 years ago and in the interim transformed into a malign raisin and also, somehow, a Senator from Connecticut. Why Lieberman? Um. MORE »

Alan Grayson! Yes! Who even is this guy, and yet, ALAN GRAYSON. Watch Alan Grayson carry on for like four minutes about how much he hates Olympia Snowe and her whole stupid state. He’s like, “Maine? Hardly!” Seriously, he basically says this. MORE »

Joe Lieberman, the actual human equivalent of a chain letter forwarded to you by your grandparents, has a very important tuff-guy job as chair of the Homeland Security Committee. And he’ll tell ya, he does not like Obama’s coterie of czars, not one bit. He’ll probably hold some trenchant as shit hearings about the hated czars, or maybe draft some heroic legislation that forbids the President from appointing policy experts. Russ Feingold is down for whatever, so he’s in too! And don’t think he won’t look up “czar” in the dictionary, because he WILL and he HAS. MORE »

Ted Kennedy’s been dead for what, a decade or so, in Kennedy-zeitgeist years? It is high time America’s other Senators begin tactlessly speculating about who will get his ritzy deluxe Capitol Building office! Here are the specs: third floor, the Capitol Building, Mall views, “a rustic coffee table that appeared to be hewn out of the old deck of a sailboat,” etc. etc. “It sounds pretty,” said Alabama Senator Richard Selby. First, that coffee table thing actually sounds a bit kitschy. And second, hey, fuck you Richard Selby, show some RESPECT. That office belongs to Ted Kennedy’s ghost until Senate Rules Committee chairman Chuck Schumer gives it to someone else… But WHOM? MORE »

Wealthy corporate human Carly Fiorina, the disgraced dingbat liar from John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, is planning a run against Barbara Boxer in next year’s California Senate race. Cute! And yesterday she launched a hilarious FLASH website that everybody has been making fun of because it is so cheesy. You should watch the opening FLASH segment! Carly Fiorina, you guys! [Carly for California]

You may have noticed by now that your editor has a serious obsession with old dingbat Chuck Grassley and finds everything he does hilarious; sorry if you do not feel the same way. But just look at this guy! What IS it? Something to do with the fact that this barking, illiterate curmudgeon, who sleeps in an oversized cornhusk behind a maintenance door in the Third Street Tunnel, is STILL a leading negotiator on Health Care Reform. Take a guess what he was wheezing about during today’s crucial Finance Committee markup. Just take a guess. Now watch the clip. Oh, that’s right, blah blah blah, some Mexican or another might still get medical attention under the current legislation, harumph, and what about those Indians, harumph harumph harumph… IN OTHER NEWS: Max Baucus got into a fight with CBO Director Doug Elmendorf, you guys! MORE »

• MASS. SENATE PASSES ‘TED KENNEDY MEMORIAL PARTISAN WARM-BODY ACT,’ HOORAY! Oh good, now Gov. Deval Patrick should be able to sign this quick fixeroo tomorrow and Michael Dukakis or whoever can putz around Washington for a few months, casting a crucial vote or two occasionally. Also, pundits can stop saying, “But the Democrats only have 59 seats, they need Olympia Snowe!!!” because it is not true anymore. No one needs Olympia Snowe! NO ONE! [Boston Globe]

Aside from just being a loony dingbat distraction during today’s hot-ticket Finance Committee markup, what other fucking insane things has Chuck Grassley been up to? “Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is blocking the all-important nomination of Alan Solomont, the president’s nominee for ambassador to Spain.” He is literally standing in the doorway, blocking all traffic, crowing. [Wash. Independent]

• ROBERT BYRD HAD A FALL! Uh oh, Robert Byrd is about to die or something. No, maybe not. He just “stood up too fast this morning in his home and fell down.” For a 91-year-old, that’s like having a H-Bomb land on your forehead. He has been taken to the hospital, so WEST VIRGINIA STATE LEGISLATURE, GET TO WORK ON EMERGENCY LEGISLATION TO APPOINT AN INTERIM– we wish him all the best and have nothing to say about politics right now. [WP/Capitol Briefing]