– Comcast plans to buy Time Warner Cable for $45.2 billion in stock, which works out to a share price of $158.82 per share. The merger will combine the largetest two cable providers in the country, making a much larger behmouth. Some have voiced concerns that the new Comcast, which already owns NBC, will now have too much control over the production and distribution of media content in America. As always, the deal is pending anti-trust approval from the DOJ, which in this case, is no small matter.
-In a race that we’ve been covering since the very beginning, fellow Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s race “the toughest Republican race in the country”. With that in mind, Corker, who is one of the few reasonably responsible elected Republican in Washington, lauded McConnel for voting for the “clean” debt limit extension, which will likely give him headaches in his primary fight with the far right’s Matt Bevin.
– Democrats are getting antsy that the IRS isn’t doing enough to enforce the already far-too-weak campaign finance regulations we have on the books. As Alexander Bolton reports for The Hill: “In the wake of the IRS targeting scandal, the Democrats are publicly prodding the agency instead of lobbying them directly. They are also careful to say the IRS should treat conservative and liberal groups equally, but they’re concerned about an impending tidal wave of attack ads funded by GOP-allied organizations.”
– The Koch brothers, the wealthy oilmen who are the uber-Republican donors of the day, have targeted Democratic Senator Kay Hagan in North Carolina. Hagan, who won her seat in 2008, has already seen the Koch brothers spend $8.2 million in TV, radio and print adds attacking her, with more than eight months still remaining until election day. In fact, the brothers have already spent more on this one Senate seat in North Carolina than every single Democratic outside group has spent on every single race for senate combined. COMBINED! Now refer back to the bullet point above this one.
– In by far the most hilarious news of the day, a lawyer is accusing Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, of plagiarizing his suit against the NSA! According to Bruce Fein, who had been working on a class-action suit against the NSA for months with various Tea Party groups (who suddenly care about civil liberties with a Democrat in the White House):
Ken Cuccinelli stole the suit,” [spokeswoman Mattie Fein] said, adding that Paul, who “already has one plagiarism issue, now has a lawyer who just takes another lawyer’s work product.”
Cucinelli, of course, refers to the Attorney General of Virginia and failed Gubernatorial candidate from earlier this year. You see, even though Fein had been working on the suit for months, when it was finally handed in, Fein’s name was gone, and replaced by the conservative political star Cucinelli’s
Political Blog to be Named Later 