Infinite Politics Thursday

Infinite linkdump Thursday, just politics.

* The Mark Sanford story grows stranger by the day, with 19 South Carolina politicians now on the record calling for his resignation. (TPM reports that Senators DeMint and Graham have gone to Sanford to prevail on him to resign.) Today he backed off a pledge to release his travel records, which suggests more trouble may be brewing for him.

* Who could have imagined that Exxon-Mobil would lie about its continued support for climate-change "skepticism" advocacy groups?

* Highlights from the first day of the Al Franken Century.

* Democrats can now "hijack elections at their whim": just another responsible, measured, and most of all empirically provable claim from RNC chairman Michael Steele, truly our country's finest elder statesman.

* But it's not all craziness: Michele Bachmann is facing criticism from the GOP for her weird lies about the Census.

* What caused the financial crisis? Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone (via MeFi) points to bubble economies nutured and created by giant investment firms, pointing the finger especially at Goldman Sachs. An Oklahoma lawmaker says it was "abortion, pornography, same sex marriage, sex trafficking, divorce, illegitimate births, child abuse, and many other forms of debauchery." I report, you decide.

* Malthusianism and world history: a chart from Conor Clarke.



It's clear these growth trends can continue forever.





* Ezra Klein has a new Washington Post column on the politics of food.