On “Meet the Press” today, all pretense was gone and diplomacy jettisoned as Obama placed the blame for a potential cliff dive squarely on Republican intransigence. “The only thing I would caution against, David, is I think this notion of, ‘Well, both sides are just kind of unwilling to cooperate.’ And that's just not true,” Obama told host David Gregory.

“I mean if you look at the facts, what you have is a situation here where the Democratic Party, warts and all, and certainly me, warts and all, have consistently done our best to try to put country first,” he added, paraphrasing John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign slogan. The clear implication: Republicans have not put country first, prioritizing ideology instead.

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While the details are sketchy and reports conflicting, according to the New York Times, the proposal would extend the Bush tax cuts up to $400,000 (instead of the $250,000 most Democrats want), and it would extend some important tax credits, but it would leave the estate tax as is, do nothing about the sequester (the automatic spending cuts that will go into effect January 1) and do nothing about the debt ceiling.

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“I really think what David Gregory did while he was inadvertently flouting the law was illustrating in a very graphic, perhaps not intentionally, but in a graphic way just how silly some of these laws are,” NRA President David Keene said yesterday. We don’t often say this, but the NRA is absolutely right.

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Two officials with the Arizona SCV division presented the group’s J. Edgar Hoover Law & Order Award to Arpaio in his office in October of 2011. This has never been previously reported. “Sheriff Arpaio, a genial host (unless you’re in his jail!) gratefully accepted the award and, in return, gave Commander [Richard] Montgomery and Adjutant [Curt] Tipton some souvenirs of the visit, to include autographed posters, a photo and the infamous pink underwear!” according to the Fall issue of the official newsletter of the SCV’s Arizona Division, “The Rebel Yell.”

The newsletter of the Tucson “camp” adds that Arpaio autographed photos of the ceremony. Here’s a picture of Arpaio accepting the award from “Rebel Yell”:

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“In the now nearly fifty-year-old effort to end cannabis prohibition laws led by non-profit citizen advocacy groups, 2012 must be viewed as a watershed year for cannabis law reformers,” said Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of NORML, a leading marijuana reform group.

Tom Angell, the chairman of Marijuana Majority, agreed. "This was the year that we broke through and succeeded in getting prominent political observers and the media to pay attention to the fact that this is quickly becoming a mainstream issue.”

The biggest victories for advocates, of course, came in Washington and Colorado, where voters approved ballot measures to legalize cannabis for private recreational use. Washington’s law has already gone into effect, while Colorado’s will soon. Advocates hope that if all goes according to plan, other states will see there’s nothing to be afraid of and follow the example.

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In a letter to congressional leaders, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner warned that the U.S. will hit the statutory borrowing limit on Monday, but his department will be able to stave off default by engaging in “extraordinary measures" to fund the government and pay off the debt for a brief period of time. Geithner said he could find about $200 billion in “headroom,” which would last about two months under “normal circumstances.” “However, given the significant uncertainty that now exists” with the fiscal cliff, he continued, “it is not possible to predict the effective duration of these measures.”

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When Westboro members planned to protest the funerals of children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, they were met by counter-protesters, including a group of bikers called the Patriot Guard Riders, which specifically organized to “shield the mourning family [of fallen servicemembers] and their friends from interruptions created by any protestor or group of protestors,” i.e., Westboro activists.

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Even Gregory, who convincingly played a devil's advocate to LaPierre Sunday, was dismissive of its effect on Sunday. “I mean the fact that that it just doesn't work is still something that you're challenged by if you want to approach this legislation again,” he said of the ban to New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, a supporter of the ban.

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“It's the one thing that would keep people safe,” LaPierre continued of his plan, “I said what I honestly thought and...what hundreds of millions of people all over this country believe will actually make a difference." All the evidence available suggests putting armed guns in school is actually not a particularly effective idea (there was an armed Sheriff’s deputy in Columbine High School on the day of the shooting, for instance).

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“The statement by the NRA is without any evidence that it would be effective,” said Dr. Fred Rivara, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington and the editor-in-chief of the pediatrics division of the Journal of the American Medical Association, in an email to Salon.

In fact, there was an armed sheriff’s deputy at Columbine High School the day of the shooting. There was an armed citizen in the Clackamas Mall in Oregon during a shooting earlier this month. There was an armed citizen at the Gabby Giffords shooting -- and he almost shot the unarmed hero who tackled shooter Jared Loughner. Virtually every university in the county already has its own police force. Virginia Tech had its own SWAT-like team. As James Brady, Ronald Reagan’s former press secretary cum gun control advocate, often notes, he was shot along with the president, despite the fact that they were surrounded by dozens of heavily armed and well-trained Secret Service agents and police.

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Naturally, the NRA was not too amenable to this, and hotel security escorted the protesters and their cardboard boxes filled with signatures to the street. Josh Nelson, an organizer with CREDO, which led the petition effort, said the activists had a simple message to the NRA: “We want them to stand down and get out of the way so Congress and the president can pass gun control legislation that will save lives.”

Nelson and several dozen volunteers had hoped to deliver the petitions to LaPierre and NRA staffers before the press conference. But when they entered the building, “the hotel staff informed us that it’s private property and that we are not welcome there, and they pushed us out the door,” he told Salon. He couldn't be sure that the NRA directed the staff to eject the protesters, or if the hotel was just doing its job to protect its clients.

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Here’s what critics say about him. Lott held prestigious positions at Yale and the University of Chicago, where he published his groundbreaking book, "More Guns, Less Crime." In the early 2000s, his work fell into controversy for employing what some academic critics termed “junk science” and for various apparently fatal methodological flaws. Later, he was unable to prove the existence of a study central to his thesis. He was also caught using a fake “sockpuppet” persona to defend his work and attack his critics online. “In most circles, this goes down as fraud,” Donald Kennedy, the then-editor of the prestigious journal Science wrote in an editorial. Even Michelle Malkin said Lott had shown an “extensive willingness to deceive to protect and promote his work.”

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And on Sunday, NRA head Wayne LaPierre will appear on "Meet the Press" to continue the gun lobby’s damage control efforts after a shooting that has galvanized political leaders to push for stronger gun laws. “The group’s abrupt shift in communications strategy shows something unusual is happening inside the powerful group: it’s feeling heat,” Politico’s Anna Palmer reported today.

If history is any guide, tomorrow and on Sunday, LaPierre -- who has been at the NRA for over 20 years -- will likely sound reasonable and open-minded about guns, and perhaps announce an evolution of thinking. Maybe the killing of 20 innocent children has genuinely moved his group away from its reflexive opposition to any kind of gun restrictions. This would certainly be welcome from an organization that has dominated the gun control debate so thoroughly over the past decade that it has effectively stamped it out.

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The House this week will vote on a tax bill.  This legislation—popularly known as “Plan B”--permanently prevents a tax increase on families making less than $1 million per year. ... Having finally seen actual legislation in writing, ATR is now able to make its determination about a legislative proposal related to the fiscal cliff. ATR will not consider a vote for this measure a violation of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge.

You know what else Plan B would do? Hike taxes on Americans making more than $1 million a year, in direct contravention of Norquist's pledge.

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So much for all that. Speaker John Boehner yesterday decided to move ahead with his "Plan B," which the White House threatened to veto today. Boehner responded with a press conference this afternoon that lasted less than one minute and suggested talks have broken down between the parties.

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The case against moving to the chained CPI is easy to make: It represents a real cut to seniors’ Social Security benefits, which has so far been a non-starter. Even advocates of the switch acknowledge this. But since we may have to swallow it, it’s worth laying out the best progressive argument possible in favor of the chained CPI. We're not saying it's right, but it's a case that should be made.

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Late last night, the White House offered a plan with two major concessions to Republicans. First, it would hike taxes on the wealthy, but only on income above $400,000, instead of the current $250,000 threshold. Second, and far more controversially, Obama offered to change the formula used to calculate Social Security benefits in a way that would cut outlays to seniors slightly while saving the program $225 billion over a decade.

The reaction from liberals, who have been demanding all along that social safety net programs be off the table, was swift and fierce. "This is a cut affecting every single beneficiary -- widows, orphans, people with disabilities and many others.  It is a cut which hurts the most those who are most vulnerable: the oldest of the old, those disabled at the youngest ages, and the poorest of the poor. Perhaps fittingly, this will be done during the holiday season, when the American people are distracted," Nancy Altman, the founding co-director of the advocacy group Social Security Works, said in a statement.

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This argument is usually made by people who can be easily dismissed, like boffo U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, or Larry Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America. Pratt said this weekend that “gun control supporters have the blood of little children on their hands” for preventing law-abiding citizens from bringing guns into schools.

But the more guns/less crime argument shouldn’t be dismissed so summarily. There’s an undeniable intuitive logic to it -- if you were facing down an active shooter, wouldn’t you want to be armed? Nearly half of Americans keep a gun in their home -- and the majority say the main reason they do so is to defend themselves. Across the country, states are expanding right to carry  laws, which allow permitted citizens to carry concealed weapons for their own defense.

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You see, you’re not officially a man until Bushmaster tells you you are. “To become a card-carrying man, visitors of bushmaster.com will have to prove they’re a man by answering a series of manhood questions. Upon successful completion, they will be issued a temporary Man Card to proudly display to friends and family,” a press release for the campaign reads.

Most of the quiz questions are pretty predictable and harmless, if dumb -- Do you eat tofu? Can you change a tire? Have you ever watched figured skating “on purpose”? -- but others are more challenging. One question gives you four possible options of how to respond if a car full of the rival team’s fans cuts you off on the way to the championship game. The correct answer, it turns out, is to commit arson: “Skip the game, find the other car in the parking lot, and render it unrecognizable with a conflagration of shoe polish and empty food containers.”

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Nadler, a rare fierce advocate of gun control on Capitol Hill, said the shooting should be a wake-up call to our “crazy attitude to guns” and the power of the gun lobby. He noted that other modern industrialized countries like the U.K., Sweden and Germany witness fewer than 50 gun homicides every year, compared to the roughly 10,000 people killed here. The difference, he said, is that they have “rational gun control regimes,” while we can barely even discuss gun control thanks to the power of the gun lobby.

“Al-Qaida killed 3,000 people in the World Trade Center in 2001. The United States went to war because of that. Because of the NRA, we’ve lost 10,000 people last year unnecessarily. It’s time we went to war,” he said. “And you have to say the National Rifle Association is the enabler of mass murderers. And we’ve got to stomp on them instead of kowtowing to them.”

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