Anderson Cooper: “The Fact Is, I'm Gay.”  —  Last week, Entertainment Weekly ran a story on an emerging trend: gay people in public life who come out in a much more restrained and matter-of-fact way than in the past.  In many ways, it's a great development: we're evolved enough not to be gob-smacked when we find out someone's gay.

W.H. gets unexpected backup: Romney camp says it's a penalty, not a tax  —  Prominent Dems including White House chief of staff Jack Lew and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have repeatedly argued in recent days that the fee for not buying insurance under the health care law is in fact a penalty and not a tax.

CPAC's boy wonder swings left  —  Jonathan Krohn took the political world by storm at 2009's Conservative Political Action Conference when, at just 13 years old, he delivered an impromptu rallying cry for conservatism that became a viral hit and had some pegging him as a future star of the Republican Party.

Obamacare is the biggest tax increase in history ... if you ignore history  —  Maybe you've heard that Obamacare is the biggest tax increase in history.  Not so.  Not even close.  Kevin Drum posted the evidence in a table.  I turned it into a chart.  More here and here.

Mitch McConnell: Covering 30 million uninsured is ‘not the issue’  —  Mitch McConnell's appearance today on Fox News Sunday was remarkably revealing — it showed as clearly as you could want that the Supreme Court decision is finally forcing Republicans to declare what, exactly …

US manufacturing shrinks for first time in 3 years  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. manufacturing shrank in June for the first time in nearly three years, a troubling sign as evidence builds that economic growth is slowing.  —  The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers …

Romney Invested in Medical-Waste Firm That Disposed of Aborted Fetuses, Government Documents Show  —  And these documents challenge Romney's claim that he left Bain Capital in early 1999.  —  Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/Zuma  —  Earlier this year, Mitt Romney nearly landed …

Scott and Jindal Go Over the Brink on Medicaid Expansion  —  In the continuing campaign for the mantle of America's Worst Governor, Florida's Rick Scott and Louisiana's Bobby Jindal became the first of their peers to put aside coy equivocation and flatly say they would oppose implementation …

Secret Service disrupts students' ‘Fire Holder protest’ over ‘suspicious package’  —  The Secret Service on Monday shutdown a student-protest calling for the firing of Attorney General Eric Holder saying they were acting on concerns over a ‘a suspicious package’ apparently left by a tourist on White House grounds.

A Vast New Taxing Power  —  The Chief Justice's ObamaCare ruling is far from the check on Congress of right-left myth.  —  The commentary on John Roberts's solo walk into the Affordable Care Act wilderness is converging on a common theme: The Chief Justice is a genius.

Romney at Langone, Murdoch, Blankfein meeting: I won't be ‘flip-flopper’ on immigration  —  Mitt Romney last week told a private group of potential supporters and business and media elites, including Rupert Murdoch, that he was treading carefully around the issue of immigration to avoid looking like a “flip-flopper.”

Sweaty Washington returns to work; mass outages persist, though numbers decline  —  Area residents experienced slightly less sweltering temperatures and relatively quiet roads on Monday, as utility companies continued to battle massive power outages from Friday's severe storms.

Downstate county clerks move to defend gay marriage ban  —  Two downstate county clerks are stepping in to defend Illinois' gay marriage ban, after high-ranking government lawyers made the rare decision not to defend the state law against a pair of legal challenges in Cook County.

The real victor in Brussels was Merkel  —  Mario Monti faced down the German chancellor and won the battle.  He will survive a few more weeks or months in politics.  It was clever of him to threaten a veto on something Angela Merkel badly needed.  He had her in the corner.