England's Queen Elizabeth is paying a visit to the Baked Apple, and in honor of her presence, you ought to take a quick look at Thom Hartmann's commentary from late last year on the birth of the USA's New Royalty at the Reagan Inaugural — and the need for populists left and right to unite in common cause.

Go read Steve Young's must-read spray-your-monitor-with-coffee exclusive at HuffPo!

On today's edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough put on a pretty conspicuous show with this line being the "pull quote:"

Meanwhile, over at Drudgico — excuse me, Politico,…

For nearly a month, the Energy Department (and BP) have known that the Deepwater Horizon well site's casing has been destroyed, with at least two under-the-seabed drill pipes blown into the blowout preventer.

But there's more bad news.

— Matt Taibbi (WARNING: article title decidedly NSFW!)

From The Crisis Papers: What happens in the Gulf of Mexico and the region around Afghanistan affects us all locally, and vice versa. Bernard Weiner explains why maintaining the status quo is tantamount to moral suicide.

There is no more aptly descriptive term for what Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee did to the late Thurgood Marshall today.

It wasn't the decision that Judge Martin Feldman made this week lifting the oil drilling moratorium that I find the most offensive. What was even more offensive...

Dave Weigel was being facetious, but, by God, the Versailles Media must have blood when someone dares get snarky and jokingly suggest that repeatedly proven prevaricator Matt "Eggman " Drudge set himself on fire. I could rant, but I'm on vacation and wouldn't want to get in the way of Amanda Marcotte's brilliant takedown of the whole mess.

Read it here.

Michael Collins argues that Elena Kagan knew or should have known that Don Siegelman's case was a political prosecution before she agreed to argue against Siegelman's appeal.

[UPDATED 6/21/10] Ha'aretz, via the Telegraph, is reporting that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel will leave at the end of President Obama's second year in office. Unconfirmed but definitely of interest — especially the detail about Emanuel finding Obama too "idealist" — although Raw Story's Stephen Webster has questions about the story's sourcing and bias.