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.

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 …

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.

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.

Why are Republicans so awful at picking Supreme Court justices?  —  Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.'s decision to side with the court's liberal bloc and uphold Obamacare raises an important question for conservatives: Why are Republicans so awful at picking Supreme Court justices?

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 …

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 …

Armando Montano, AP summer intern, dies in Mexico City at age 22  —  Eduardo Verdugo/Associated Press - In this June 4, 2012 photo, Armando Montano, 22, poses for an ID photo at the Associated Press office in Mexico City.  Montano, an aspiring journalist who was working this summer …

Christie Calls Reporter “Idiot” at Press Conference  —  When a reporter tried to ask Chris Christie an off-topic question at a press conference, the governor snapped at him  —  New Jersey's governor is known for speaking his mind when something displeases him.

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.

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.

Europe's Great Illusion  —  Over the past few months I've read a number of optimistic assessments of the prospects for Europe.  Oddly, however, none of these assessments argue that Europe's German-dictated formula of redemption through suffering has any chance of working.

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.