Here’s the press release from his office:

Congressman John P. Murtha (PA-12) passed away peacefully this afternoon at 1:18 p.m. at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, VA. At his bedside was his family.

Murtha, 77, was Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.

First elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in February of 1974, Murtha dedicated his life to serving his country both in the military and in the halls of Congress. A former Marine, he became the first Vietnam War combat Veteran elected to the U.S. Congress.

This past Saturday, February 6, 2010, Murtha became Pennsylvania's longest serving Member of Congress.

Yesterday Sarah Palin finally addressed Limbaugh’s use of the word “retard” and as expected, she approves!

PALIN: I agree with Rush Limbaugh. He was using satire to politically correct —

WALLACE: He used the “r” word.

PALIN: He used satire. Name-calling by anyone, I teach this to my children and you teach it to your children and grandchildren, too. Name calling by anyone is just unnecessary. It just wastes time. Let’s speak to the issues and — [...]

PALIN: I didn’t hear Rush Limbaugh calling a group of people whom he did not agree with ‘f-ing retards’ and we did know that Rahm Emanuel has been reported, did say that. there is a big difference there. Again, name-calling, using language that is insensitive, by anyone, male, female, Republican, Democrat, is unnecessary. It’s inappropriate. Let’s all just grow up.

As Think Progress points out, Rush used the phrase over 40 times saying, even saying there was going to be a “retard summit at the White House”.

But it doesn’t stop there. Sarah seems upset with name-calling, yet look at what she says immediately after that:

They are kooks. I agree with Rush Limbaugh.

Either amnesia sets in or her personality just switched, because Sarah goes right to name calling. And let’s not forget that name calling was her big ploy while making campaign speeches, calling people terrorists, socialist and anything else she could think of.

One final thought about this. Why in the world is Fox News spending part of their Sunday show interviewing employees? This would be like Joe Scarborough being the big guest on Meet the Press. It’s fine to have them on a panel, but as the headliner? Please….

Talk about being busted. Last night while giving her little speech to the tea bagger convention, Sarah Palin is caught reading answers from her palm. Not only that, but in the same speech she also gets on Obama as a “guy with a teleprompter”.

Obama went to the House GOP and answered questions for a couple of hours, all without a teleprompter. Palin walks into her fan club and can’t answer softball questions without writing the answers on her hand? Welcome to the world of incompetence.

I’ve been trying to stay out of the tabloid mania that is John Edwards, but this caught my interest today:

Young also said another copy has been turned over to the FBI, which has been investigating the money that exchanged hands during Edwards' second White House campaign.

An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment.

Unless that video tape shows Edwards paying this lady then why in the hell does the FBI even need it? Edwards has admitted everything, including fathering the child, and having sex isn’t illegal, so what could this possibly add to the investigation? I can’t think of any reason.

Wow South Carolina is really ahead of the curve on fighting terrorism. I expect Osama is already packing up shop:

Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina's Secretary of State and declare their intentions -- or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.

The state's "Subversive Activities Registration Act," passed last year and now officially on the books, states that "every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States ... shall register with the Secretary of State."

There's even a $5 filing fee.

That’s amazing and it comes from one of the reddest states in the union. We should do this with everything. Require drug dealers, murderers, rapists and whoever else to pre-register. That would get rid of any need for defense or law enforcement. Of course the bad side is all that added bureaucracy in our government.

Wait?

Republicans are adding bureaucracy?

Yup – again the hypocrisy stinks, but that stench is overshadowed by the over all reeking of stupidity from this idiotic law. And to think the Republicans want America to take them seriously on combating terrorism. Hell you got a better chance of Mark Sanford keeping it in his pants.

Some good news on the unemployment front as the new numbers for January show a decline to 9.7%. Now we get to wait and hear the Republicans explain how this is a failure of the Obama administration.

Yesterday it was Kit Bond, today we have Richard Shelby:

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary "blanket hold" on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.

So this is the Republican games being exposed? They will do what they can to really run up government spending, then blame it all on the Democrats. It’s time to stop trying to play nice with these assholes and go nuclear. President Obama should hold a prime time press conference and call these Republicans out by name for their games. The American people need to be made aware of what is going on and if the RNC and tea party want to support these assholes, then they also need called out. It’s time to fight back.

This is the kind of news that should be plastered on every network tonight:

The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to confirm Martha N. Johnson as head of the General Services Administration, nearly 10 months after she was first nominated to head the federal agency.

Upon assuming office, Johnson "will become the first permanent Administrator of the General Services Administration in nearly two years."

Earlier in 2009, Johnson was unanimously approved by members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. But a single senator, Republican Kit Bond from Missouri, has used his symbolic 'privilege' to hold up consideration of Johnson's nomination since last summer. The delay was meant to pressure GSA administrators to approve a $175 million federal building project in Kansas City.

A nomination held up for 10 months because a damn Republican wanted his pork. Why isn’t the tea baggers or Republicans calling out this crap? Because they are damn hypocrites – every single one of them.

Fox covered news of a deadly shark attack in eastern Florida this week and right after covering the story, Dick Morris declared "you got to be afraid of Obama and sharks”. As Paddy says; “They have gone full circle and are actually a parody of themselves”

Now it looks like the Republicans have found a loophole that will let them block items in reconciliation:

Republicans say they have found a loophole in the budget reconciliation process that could allow them to offer an indefinite number of amendments.

Though it has never been done, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) says he’s prepared to test the Senate’s stamina to block the Democrats from using the process to expedite changes to the healthcare bill.

Experts on Senate procedural rules, from both parties, note that such a filibuster is possible. While reconciliation rules limit debate to 20 hours, senators lack similiar constraints on amendments and could conceivably continue offering them until 60 members agree to cut the process off.

The Republican platform – screw governing and do nothing but block, block, block. There is a way around this though:

Or  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) could use a tactic similar to the so-called nuclear option to quash the GOP tactics.

Yeah like that would happen with King Useless the majority leader.

Drudge is pushing this headline today:

Largest-ever federal payroll to hit 2.15 million employees...

It goes to a Washington Times story talking about the increasing workforce of the U.S. government – not a bad thing with unemployment where it’s at. But let’s take a look at where these numbers are coming from:

Mr. Obama says the civilian work force will drop by 80,000 next year, mostly because of a reduction in U.S. census workers added in 2010 but then dropped in 2011 after the national population count is finished. That still leaves 1.35 million civilian federal employees on the payroll in 2011.

From 1981 through 2008, the civilian work force remained at about 1.1 million to 1.2 million, with a low of 1.07 million in 1986 and a high of more than 1.2 million in 1993 and in 2008. In 2009, the number jumped to 1.28 million.

Including both the civilian and defense sectors, the federal government will employ 2.15 million people in 2010 and 2.11 million in 2011, excluding Postal Service workers.

So there really hasn’t been that big of a jump in the size of government, well except for defense, which is about 79% of the increase. Will the right start demanding that we make cuts there? Haha yeah right. Let’s take a closer look at these defense numbers:

After years of decline at the end of the Cold War, the Defense Department is restaffing. Mr. Obama estimated that the Pentagon will have 720,000 employees this year and 757,000 employees next year - up from a low of 649,000 in 2003.

The data also show that the Department of Homeland Security will grow by 7,000 a year in 2010 and 2011, and the Veterans Affairs Department will grow by 12,000 in 2010 and an additional 4,000 in 2011.

One thing that blows my mind there is that we have to keep hiring more and more people to oversee these contractors. It really seems like it would be cheaper to do away with contractors and hire the people directly.

The Washington Times also speaks truth here, but I believe their intent is a little out of context:

Mr. Obama is in a situation similar to that of Mr. Clinton, who took office when the budget deficit was at a record high and government bureaucracy was expanding, even though the Pentagon was shedding workers with the end of the Cold War

So Obama and Clinton share the same experience entering office. What else do they share? Could it be the fact that they inherited those deficits and huge jumps in government bureaucracy from Republican administrations. Nah that wouldn’t be the case. We are talking about the party of “fiscal responsibility” and “small government” after all. I also just saw a pink unicorn running past my window.

Markos has just released a new poll with some very interesting numbers. These are from self-identified Republicans:

Should Barack Obama be impeached, or not?

Yes 39
No 32
Not Sure 29

I would love to know what high crimes and misdemeanors they believe he has committed.

Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist?

Yes 63
No 21
Not Sure 16

Again – a total myth. President Obama is to the right of Hillary Clinton and they still think he is some socialist. Why? Because of the bank bailouts? Those were enacted under Bush and heavily supported by John McCain – the Republican nominee at the time.

Markos has much more on this madness.

Yesterday the king of idiots, Andrew Breitbart, started claiming that James O’Keefe and his pack of Little Rascals were denied access to an attorney for hours. Let’s think about that for a minute. These guys were caught on federal property, without authorization and carrying electronic devices in a post 9/11 America. Talk about something that could set off the terrorist alarms. If Bush was still President then they would end up at Gitmo.

Easy – buy them yourself!

Sarah Palin has been using her political action committee to buy up thousands of copies of her book, "Going Rogue," in order to mail copies of the memoir to her donors, newly filed campaign records show.

The former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate had her political organization spend more than $63,000 on what her reports describe as "books for fundraising donor fulfillment."

It would be interesting to see her sales numbers without the books she bought and the ones right wing organizations like NewsMax bought.

We are starting to see some movement on the DADT front:

Tomorrow, Congress will be holding its first hearing in 17 years on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the 1993 law that bars gay men and women from serving openly in the military. LGBT leaders expect that Defense Secretary Robert Gates will announce that while Congress and the administration work on a permanent repeal of the law, the Defense Department “will not take action to discharge service members whose sexual orientation is revealed by third parties or jilted partners, one of the most onerous aspects of the law.” Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen aren’t, however, “expected to offer a specific legislative proposal to repeal the law.”

(emphasis added)