It's like the early 2000's all over again:

The U.S. Secret Service has intercepted a letter addressed to President Barack Obama that contained a "suspicious substance."

A law enforcement official said the letter is very similar to one recently mailed to Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker. That letter tested positive Tuesday for poisonous ricin.

The official requested anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation.

There are reports that they have a suspect in the mailings to Sen. Wicker this week. If the two are connected then it appears we don't have some partisan hack engaging in this terrorism, but rather somebody out to just get our elected officials.

The only other thing I can think of is that Wicker was one of the 16 Republicans that voted to end the filibuster on extended background checks last week, so there could be that connection.

When I talk to a client about what their website should do, the number one point I hit on is recognition. You want people to see your site and know what it is you are trying to sell. A big part of that comes from the name.

So if you look at this site, what do you think?

You do get that the site is NRCC, but what does that mean? Sure, we follow politics, so we will instantly recognize NRCC as being the acronym for the National Republican Congressional Committee, but fur the majority of people out there, they have no idea. As matter of fact, the site gives a feeling that they are avoiding the word Republican, until you get to the very bottom.

Having worked in the web business for over a decade, I have worked with countless PR professionals. They know what words sell and which ones don't. I'm sure the NRCC put money into research of this, and that is why they decided to hide the work "Republican" so hard on their new site, and that right there should tell us what Republican means in this country today - something not worth selling.

So, could this be the way in which Republicans heal after 2012?

A few weeks ago the GOP released their "autopsy" of the 2012 election. In that report a focus group used phrases such as "Scary", "Out of Touch", and "Stuff old Men" to describe the party. These are not phrases you want to hear when you are trying to win over a new generation of voters.

While a lot of people in the Republican Party have done a 180 on marriage equality, there is still a huge problem within the party. Take the comments this weekend of the chair of Georgia's Republican Party.

On Saturday the Marietta Daily Journal published a story, where chairwoman Sue Everhart warns that straight people would enter bogus marriages for "the benefits"

Everhart said while she respects all people, if same sex marriage is legalized across the country, there will be fraud.

“You may be as straight as an arrow, and you may have a friend that is as straight as an arrow,” Everhart said. “Say you had a great job with the government where you had this wonderful health plan. I mean, what would prohibit you from saying that you’re gay, and y’all get married and still live as separate, but you get all the benefits? I just see so much abuse in this it’s unreal. I believe a husband and a wife should be a man and a woman, the benefits should be for a man and a woman. There is no way that this is about equality. To me, it’s all about a free ride.”

All those gays and lesbians out there, fighting to enjoy the same rights as a straight couple are just interested in freeloading? I'm sorry, but this is total bullshit. I happen to know plenty of men and women, who are no longer in love and even see other people, yet they stay married just for the benefits. There is all kinds of proof of fraud from straight marriages like this, but none on same-sex marriage.

It's another strawman that the GOP is using to continue their platform of hate and fear. They also know this, which is why the Georgia GOP is refusing to talk about the comments.

There is no doubt about it that Michele Bachmann is a darling of the Tea Party and a heart throb for many wingnuts. It also turns out that she may be in some serious legal trouble, per The Daily Beast:

The Daily Beast has learned that federal investigators are now interviewing former Bachmann campaign staffers nationwide about alleged intentional campaign-finance violations. The investigators are working on behalf of the Office of Congressional Ethics, which probes reported improprieties by House members and their staffs and then can refer cases to the House Ethics Committee.

“I have been interviewed by investigators,” says Peter Waldron, a former Bachmann staffer who’s embroiled in his own fight with his former boss, involving his allegations of pay-to-play politics and improper payments by the campaign—making him one of several members of Bachmann’s inner circle who’ve fallen out with the woman they once hoped would become commander in chief. While he was careful to avoid specifics in regard to the investigating body, Waldron said that “investigators came [and] interviewed me and are interviewing other staff members across the country.”

Two other former staffers confirmed the existence of the investigation this weekend, and on Monday Bachmann’s campaign counsel, William McGinley, of the high-powered firm Patton Boggs, confirmed that the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) was looking into the congresswoman’s presidential campaign last year.

Let's face it, Tucker Carlson is slime. He has always been nothing but slime and it makes you wonder why any media, left or right, would have ever hired him. But once he ran his course with the networks and had to venture out on his own, he took his same, slimy brand and packaged it up into a website called The Daily Caller. Now it appears that Carlson is set to take on Rupert Murdoch to become the king of slime:

A top Dominican law enforcement official said Friday that a local lawyer has reported being paid by someone claiming to work for the conservative Web site the Daily Caller to find prostitutes who would lie and say they had sex for money with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.).

The local lawyer told Dominican investigators that a foreign man, who identified himself as “Carlos,” had offered him $5,000 to find and pay women in the Caribbean nation willing to make the claims about Menendez, according to Jose Antonio Polanco, district attorney for the La Romana region, where the investigation is being conducted.

I would love to see this hit the courts now and Menendez end up owning the little creep.

But let's think about this for a moment. What Tucker's site has allegedly done is right on course for the right wing online media. Look at Breitbart. They have used James O'Keefe to produce videos, edit them down to twist the facts and destroy the lives of countless people, including Shirley Sherrod, who lost her career because of these punks.

After their grueling loses in 2012 the Republican National Committee decided to spend some time and look into what went wrong. This morning, the party released their report, which included marketing research from focus groups. Here's what part of it said:

"Asked to describe Republicans, they said that the Party is “scary,” “narrow minded,” and “out of touch” and that we were a Party of “stuffy old men.” This is consistent with the findings of other post-election surveys," the report states.

There isn't much on issues in the report, but when it comes to gay marriage, the report concedes:

“Already, there is a generational difference within the conservative movement about issues involving the treatment and the rights of gays — and for many younger voters, these issues are a gateway into whether the Party is a place they want to be”

This comes a day after the top elected Republican, Speaker John Boehner said he "can't ever imagine" supporting gay marriage.

So how is the GOP going to fix this problem? Part of it has already been released and here is Josh Marshall's take on it:

So drastically shorter primary phase, much earlier nominating convention, many fewer debates. Aren’t all of Reince Priebus’s structural reforms basically aimed at dramatically reducing the time period in which the actual Republican party base is on display for the public at large?

The Republican Lt. Governor of Florida has tendered her resignation amid a very nasty scandal:

Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll announced her resignation Wednesday, a day after she was questioned by authorities investigating possible illegal gambling at an Internet cafe company that she once represented.

The head of the company, Allied Veterans of the World, has been accused of a using the cafes as an illegal front for veterans' charity and keeping millions of dollars in profits.

Carroll's resignation letter to Gov. Rick Scott, dated Tuesday, offered no details about her reason for leaving. But Scott's chief of staff, Adam Hollingsworth, said she was interviewed by Florida Department of Law Enforcement officers Tuesday regarding her work with Allied Veterans of the World.

So this is how Republicans support our veterans? I'm speechless! And the details shed even more light on this scam:

According to an Internal Revenue Service affidavit filed in federal court, Allied Veterans evolved from a charitable organization that ran bingo games and held bake sales for veterans beginning in 1979 to a group suspected of operating more than 40 illegal for-profit gambling locations around Florida. The veterans charity was a fraud, according to the IRS.

"In an effort to mislead the public into believing that it is not profiting from an illegal gambling enterprise, Allied Veterans and others have engaged in a conspiracy and scheme to defraud," the affidavit said.

And it appears that Carroll has tried to help the company out while she was still serving as a state legislature: