Quick Clips: Gas Pain - Porter opposes Mother's Day?

** Mid-grade unleaded gasoline was just a tiny scooch under $4.00 per gallon yesterday in Winnemucca, NV, and thank the heavens my pick up doesn’t require diesel – that was posted at $4.37 per gallon. However, the American Petroleum Institute will be right there to tell me that IT’S NOT THEIR FAULT. “Punishing them,” as in making them pay their appropriate and legal royalties, and their taxes on record incomes, will only “make them” raise the prices further. [WaPo]

** Close doesn’t count: “A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran.” [Kevin Drum] Oops?

** Perrspectives provides “John McCain’s Top Ten Out-of-Touch-Moments”

** “Contractors’ offshore tax havens under more scrutiny” Government Executive

** “Keeping secrets from the CIA: Why was Langley cut out of clandestine meetings with Iranian informants?” [Newsweek] Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball report how the Pentagon excluded the agency from “inappropriate” back channel contacts with Iranian informants, including a “key figure from the Iran-Contra affair.” Does this sound all too much like Senator John McCain’s proposal for a new super-spy agency predicated on the World War II era Office of Strategic Services? [Nation]

** Mother Jones has a good video, “McCain’s Pastor Problem.” Think Progress posts “McCain stays silent on Hagee’s homophobic slurs.”

** “Infighting holds up New Orleans levee money” Times-Picayune But wait! That wasn’t all that got tangled up in the House Republican tantrum yesterday – they voted against their own Mothers’ Day Resolution, [Think Progress] including Representative Jon Porter (R-NV3) who voted against tabling the motion to reconsider the bill. [rc 275]

** Reports and information from the House Education and Labor Committee’s investigation of the Crandall Canyon Mine disaster have been posted online for public access.

** The House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs will hold a hearing on the “Transition Assistance Program for Guard and Reserve Forces,” on May 16^th.