This is Columbus Day, a federal holiday, so we’ll be blogging a bit Lite today unless news developments dictate otherwise. If it’s just another day of Republican efforts to obtain cover for retreat on a failed hostage-taking effort, it probably won’t take twelve posts to explain that.

Here’s the Vermont band Grace Potter & the Nocturnals with “Mr. Columbus.”

YouTube video

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Ed Kilgore is a political columnist for New York and managing editor at the Democratic Strategist website. He was a contributing writer at the Washington Monthly from January 2012 until November 2015, and was the principal contributor to the Political Animal blog.