Midday Open Thread

• An idea whose time has clearly come: Draft Bachmann.
• California is busy printing up IOU's. That's not a messed up budgeting system at all...
• Gay sex has been decriminalized in Delhi, which is expected to lead to further advances in equality in other areas of India. (Bear in mind the law being overturned dates to the British empire.)
• Holy crap.
• What Yglesias said. Sheesh, and I'd had a generally favorable view of Amy Klobuchar.
• John Cole speculates on what right-wing elites really believe and comes up mostly empty.
• How has the blogosphere changed in the past 6 years? This post isn't easy to excerpt to give you a taste, but it's prompting a lot of discussion -- check out the links in her updates. Ezra Klein argues that "she dances around the issue a bit: The place has professionalized."

  The blogosphere isn't thrumming with the joyous, raucous, weirdness of the early years. And that's a shame. But the upside is that it's more careful. It reports and investigates and uncovers. My blog certainly isn't as fun to write as it used to be. But it's also a lot better than it used to be. And it certainly pays more. And so it goes. The blogosphere grew up and it got a job, or, to be more specific, lots of jobs. That made it less fun, but, like a frat house legend who now goes to work every morning, probably more useful to society.

• Not in a million years would I do this.
• Steve Benen calls it: Jim DeMint is a Jesse Helms for the 21st century.