Obama had joked that people complain that he doesn't reach across the aisle enough. "'Why don't you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?' they ask," Obama said. "Really? Why don't you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?"

McConnell responded during an appearance before the Southeast Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, the Washington Post reports, saying: “I’m shocked. He’s obviously not seeing my soft side.”

His campaign Twitter account also tweeted a picture of McConnell drinking with an empty chair, also looping in Clint Eastwood:

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"Mitch McConnell is Obama's No. 1 target because Mitch protects Kentucky from Obama's bad ideas," the ad says. "Liberals will do anything to beat McConnell. They also launched racial attacks against Mitch's wife. And now liberals compare Mitch to al Qaeda terrorists and North Korea's dictator. How dirty will Obama's allies get?"

Watch:

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In a blog post for the Daily Beast called  "James O’Keefe in Defense of Taping Mitch McConnell, and Everyone Else," O'Keefe writes that he "shares David Corn’s vision of bringing veritas to the vulgate, or truth to the people," and says that "I’ve become all too familiar with civil and criminal statutes that are bad for democracy because they insolate those vested in a public trust from democratic accountability."

From the post:

While the two young people who allegedly recorded McConnell, Shawn Reilly and Curtis Morrison, may have overstepped the line this time, conservatives need to understand that the potential punishment they face is incommensurate with the crime under the present law. Raw and unfiltered recordings are the best tools we have to expose things as they really are. Last year John Fund referred to our video showing Eric Holder’s ballot to vote offered to a stranger as “cinema verité.” Now David Corn said of his McConnell tape, “No one needs to listen to me or any commentator to know what it means ... It’s all there ... It’s journalism verité.” As someone who shares David Corn’s vision of bringing veritas to the vulgate, or truth to the people, I wholeheartedly agree.

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McConnell's very good week might not end up meaning very much, though, if the United States Senate manages, somehow, to pass major legislation on gun control and immigration any time soon. Because whenever the United States Senate manages to accomplish anything, conservatives get very irate with Mitch McConnell for allowing it to happen.

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Now, it's worth stating that we don't know for sure that Progress Kentucky produced the tape or is involved in any way -- this is just the word of one Democratic strategist, who has an interest in distancing his party from the group.

But it's not the first time the super PAC has gotten into trouble. In late February, they made a series of offensive "jokes" about McConnell's wife on Twitter, attacking her for being Chinese-American. Even Ashley Judd felt compelled to issue a public condemnation.

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But the point isn't really to catch the perpetrator. The point is this ridiculous splash on his campaign website, in which visitors are told that McConnell's office was "wiretapped" by "liberals" and are encouraged to respond by sending all of their contact information, along with some money, to Mitch McConnell's reelection campaign.

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Meanwhile, the Senate is ready for an opening vote on restricting guns as Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., set a roll call for Thursday on starting consideration of the firearms legislation. Odds are growing that Democrats will win enough Republican support to thwart an effort by conservatives and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to block consideration from even starting.

"I hope Republicans will stop trying to shut down debate and start engaging in the tough issues we were sent to Washington to tackle," Reid said.

Together, the developments were a boost for gun control advocates battling for restrictions in the wake of December's shootings that killed 20 first-graders and six staffers at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

Even so, the ultimate fate of gun legislation remains unclear, clouded by opposition from many Republicans and moderate Democrats in the Democratic-led Senate and the Republican-run House. Many critics say the proposal would violate the Second Amendment right to bear arms and burden law-abiding gun owners.

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"We're going to vote Thursday," Reid said. "I'm going to file cloture on the bill tonight."

Though Democrats do have the numbers to break the filibuster, they still might not have enough votes to overcome other procedural hurdles and hold an up-or-down vote.

More than a dozen Republican senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said that they would join a filibuster led by Rand Paul to stop debate on gun control legislation.

But at least eight other Senate Republicans broke ranks and said they would vote for cloture with the Democrats. From the Washington Post:

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Most recently, Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., said he thinks there should be a “vote up or down."

“I’ll speak for myself on that question,” he said on CBS’s “This Morning.” “There’s no ambivalence on the gun issue, I think everyone knows what the issues are. We have not seen the final draft of the legislation that was produced, I understand, last night, but I think it deserves a vote up or down.”

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In addition to portraying her as a Hollywood liberal, the team suggested using her well-known struggles with depression against her, and essentially planned to portray her as an anti-American weirdo. "This sounds extreme, but she is emotionally unbalanced," the aide leading the meeting told McConnell.

In her 2011 memoir, Judd discussed her past bouts with depression, which included a brief hospitalization and the revelation that she had had thoughts of suicide -- in 6th grade. As they went through the material, McConnell's staff laughed heartily at several occasions and mocked Judd's comment about the culture shock she feels upon returning to the U.S. after a stint abroad.

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Miller writes on the Daily Beast:

As the actress contemplated whether to move back to Kentucky and challenge Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, I was alternating with Congressman John Yarmuth as witness for the defense against a steady stream of salacious recriminations.

The prosecution was assisted in nearly every article by the same handful of Democratic professionals railing against the prospects of a Judd candidacy, promoting instead the potential Senate candidacy of Kentucky’s young Secretary of State, Alison Lundergan Grimes. While many may legitimately believe that Grimes is the better candidate, many of those who have been quoted impugning Judd, or have done so on background, also have personal motives: some stand to profit from a Grimes campaign, some may have been trying to redress perceived “disses” by the actress, and some may be aiming to keep Grimes out of the 2015 gubernatorial race, where she could undermine their preferred candidates.

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According to the poll, which measured what Americans dislike about each party, 21 percent of national adults said Republicans don't compromise, including 26 percent of Republicans, 17 percent of independents and 22 percent of Democrats. The second most common criticism was that Republicans are for "protecting the wealthy, not the middle class."

For Democrats, 14 percent said they spend too much, including 23 percent of Republicans, 11 percent of independents and 10 percent of Democrats. The second biggest criticism was that Democrats were also "unwilling to compromise."

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From the Washington Post:

Democratic Senate strategists have argued that Judd would be a good, if unconventional candidate, pointing to her ability to rival or even eclipse McConnell in fundraising. But McConnell’s path to victory involves savaging his opponent, and Judd’s status as an actress and celebrity would have offered him loads of ammunition.

The most likely Democratic candidate is now Secretary of State Allison Lundergan Grimes.

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Politico reports that Clinton is courting Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Kentucky secretary of state, to get into the race:

Grimes does have the Clintons in her corner. Earlier this month, the former president — a longtime friend of Grimes’s father — privately urged the young secretary of state to mount a Senate bid while assuring Grimes that both he and his wife, Hillary, would get behind her should she decide to take on the powerful Senate GOP leader, according to several sources familiar with the matter.

Grimes has also reportedly met with officials from the DSCC, according to Politico.

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To save cash, White House tours are curtailed,

But the House tours have NOT been derailed.

So you still can have fun,

Seeing nothing get done,

On the Hill, watching nonsense unveiled.

Madeleine Begun Kane

Bayside, N.Y.

I must say I'm calling it quits,

On caring which cardinal sits,

In St. Peter's chair --

The whole damned affair,

Is Mardi Gras, minus the tits.

Nancy Cahill

The new Pope hails from Argentina.

And I’m wondering just what that might mean-a.

Let’s hope that his Latin,

Is smoother than satin,

And that his church is in for one big house clean-a.

Gary Sandy

Davis, Calif.

In the senate McConnell's a dean,

Of the GOP obstruction machine.

But his name will be mud,

When our dear Ashley Judd,

Kicks his ass in twenty fourteen.

Mike Moulton

Gainesville, Fla.

Rand Paul held the floor by the hour,

His words pouring forth like a shower.

He could have gone on,

Saying drone use begone,

But his bladder held ultimate power.

Thompson Lange

Carmel, Calif.

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From earlier:

Showcasing a tall stack of papers that he said was the text of the Affordable Care Act, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told CPAC that "Obamacare should be repealed root and branch."

He noted in the course of his speech that the Affordable Care Act only passed by one vote, with all Senate Republicans voting against it. "We'll fight [Obamacare] and every other assault on liberty that the left throws at us, and restore the American ideal," he said.

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Sen. Mitch McConnell, in addition to being a fixture on the Sunday talk show circuit, leads a diverse Senate Republican caucus. Actress Ashley Judd continues to lay the groundwork for a potential run against McConnell in 2014, which has the national and state press abuzz. And the commonwealth’s junior senator, Rand Paul, just made a 13-hour splash on CSPAN-2 with his filibuster last week. And he’s a top contender for the GOP’s presidential nomination in 2016.

But this isn’t the result of some Kentucky machine churning out political superstars. “None of them came up in the traditional way. They didn’t come up through the Legislature. Even McConnell was sort of nobody’s protégé. He just kind of worked his way up,” said Trey Grayson, the former Kentucky secretary of state who is now director of the Harvard Institute of Politics.

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Because of her star power and because of the political power of the man she wants to unseat, Judd’s flirtation with the race has drawn considerable national attention, and the coverage will only intensify if she gets in. That has led Dave Weigel, among others, to argue that the political world’s focus on Judd is misplaced – that her party label, liberal views and Hollywood background are all a poor match for an electorate that has become increasingly Republican over the last few decades.

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Reached via email, Judd

...offered a not-quite-ironclad denial to The Huffington Post. “I am not sure who is saying this stuff, but it is not I! I’d prefer as a fan of your journalism that you stay accurate and credible. We told everyone who called us yesterday these stories are fabrications.”

But she declined to specify which "stories,” did not say what wasn't "accurate,” and did not respond when asked directly whether she had, in fact, decided to run or chosen a time to declare her intentions.

According to the piece, Judd plans to go public with her decision around the time of the Kentucky Derby when Kentuckyis in the media spotlight.

Judd, sources say, is working with New York pollster Jefrey Pollock; has interviewed a number of media consultants including Anita Dunn, formerly of the Obama campaigns, and J.B. Poersch, the former head of the Democrats' national senate campaign committee, as well as leaders of Emily's List; and is lining up allies and field organizers.

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