Tuesday morning roundup

This is AWESOME:

Four months later, here is Mr. LaHood, smiling broadly in his sprawling office, sipping a “healthy” Frappuccino lunch (“healthy because it will keep me awake this afternoon”). Behind his desk hangs a photograph of Mr. Obama adjusting Mr. LaHood’s neckwear (inscribed: “This isn’t the House, straighten your tie”).

BTW, this profile of Peter Orszag from the New Yorker is well worth a read, and funny, too.

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I don't agree with Douthat's assessment of Specter or the Senators from Maine, but since I've apparently started a series on the irrelevance of political labels, it would be only right to include the above piece.

I will not post, as I myself have grown tired of its fruits, the proliferating body of work on the demise of the Republican party, unless I see something original or particularly insightful.

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How folk music has to keep on keepin' it real (pun kind of intended, then reconsidered when I saw that it didn't quite work, but then I kept it because it's time to go to work).