Weigel

Opening Act: Ted and Harry Down by the Schoolyard

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Jon Bon Jovi attend the Overdose Prevention Act Bill signing at Barnert Medical Arts Complex on May 2, 2013 in Paterson, New Jersey.

Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images

Chris Christie gets lap-band surgery, making the kind of admission that I can’t think of any other potential president making. I’m not minimizing the surgery or saying obviously Christie did it to run for president. But we typically expect our potential presidents to be all-natural. Reporters stayed away from John Kennedy’s health problems and medications. Ronald Reagan dismissed questions about his age with jokes. Lap-band surgery, an invasive procedure that forces you to lose weight by shrinking your stomach, has been undergone by a few lower-level pols—former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, former Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.—but this is a first.

David Nakumura captures the total goat rodeo that followed the release of the Heritage Foundation’s immigration study.

Politico finds Democrats worried (for a change) that gun control activists will take their knees out in red states. It was mere weeks ago when Democrats were saying they could shift the paradigm and make a version of “gun safety” palatable in those states, wasn’t it?

And Brian Beutler explains why Harry Reid was able to contemptuously dispatch Ted Cruz when he made a flashy but doomed—what are they odds!—motion on the budget. Whether you side with Cruz here, for being so truth-tellerish, or whether you side with Reid, for knowing Senate rules, probably depends on your political allegiance.