Morning Constitutional – Wednesday, 14 July 2010

Happy Bastille day, everybody. Bristol and Levi are engaged (again). Now, your morning constitutional:

President Obama has nominated Jacob Lew to be the next director of the Office of Management and Budget. Lew had previously held the same position in the last few years of the Clinton administration, and most recently was deputy secretary of state.

BP has placed a new cap on the broken oil well in the Gulf and has high hopes for its success. However, testing has been delayed.

The NAACP passed a resolution on Tuesday condemning what it feels is rampant racism in the tea party movement.

With enough votes accounted for, Harry Reid will bring the finance reform bill up for a vote in the Senate on Thursday. Regulators have already started working on implementing the bill\’s measures.

Republicans to unemployed: Why don\’t you guys just get jobs already?

FiveThirtyEight: It is too the economy!

People don\’t trust Republicans on the economy or to make the right decisions; plan to vote for them anyway.

Will Saletan: Can a black/white performance gap be hereditary and not racial?

The Euro: worse than the gold standard?

In the U.S., women\’s median wages were on average 80.2 percent of men\’s last year. The District of Columbia led the nation in parity, where the women full-time workers made 96.5 percent of the male counterparts.

Peak oil vs supply crunch — or, both.

Mark Reckless, the Conservative MP for Rochester and Strood, apologized for being drunk in the House of Commons and missing a vote on the budget.

A utterly fascinating animated recapitulation of the world’s nuclear tests since 1945.

Finally, a jet-powered school bus goes 35o mph.