UPDATE: Senator Mitch McConnell has asked the FBI to investigate the recording of a campaign strategy meeting in which the lawmaker and his staff made disparaging remarks about actress Ashley Judd. Ah yes, priorities.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s aides were reportedly building up an attack campaign against Judd that would go after her mental health and religion, according to tape leaked to Mother Jones on Tuesday. The actress had been mulling challenging McConnell in the 2014 election, a seat that Democrats consider vulnerable. “They want to fight? We’re ready,” McConnell says in the tape, despite having being silent in the media while Judd’s name was being floated. The meeting leader, who is unidentified, says Judd is “emotionally unbalanced.” The meeting attendees laughed at some recordings of Judd’s, including when she describes getting the most of her faith from a parable involving St. Francis, with one attendee mocking that as “my favorite line so far.”

Mother Jones:

But the McConnell gang explored going far beyond Judd's politics and policy preferences. This included her mental health. The meeting leader noted:

She's clearly, this sounds extreme, but she is emotionally unbalanced. I mean it's been documented. Jesse can go in chapter and verse from her autobiography about, you know, she's suffered some suicidal tendencies. She was hospitalized for 42 days when she had a mental breakdown in the '90s.

In her 2011 memoirs, All That Is Bitter & Sweet, Judd recounts her past bouts with depression, noting that she had considered suicide as a sixth-grader and that as an adult she had checked into a rehab center for depression. (The Jesse mentioned might have been Jesse Benton—the grandson of former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and the nephew of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)—who was hired last year by McConnell to run his reelection effort. Three years ago, Benton worked on Rand Paul's successful tea-party-driven Senate primary campaign against a GOP establishment candidate handpicked by McConnell. Benton did not respond to a request for comment.)

It's certainly frightful to listen to McConnell's gang reveal themselves to be such bottom-feeding mental midgets. Their plan to defeat Ashley Judd if she had decided to run against McConnell was to mock and attack her for suffering with depression? I believe that Judd might well have handily trounced McConnell once he and his aides revealed themselves to be the sort who get their shits and giggles from a person's suffering with what can be a horribly debilitating illness. With one of of every ten Americans reporting depression, it's certainly no laughing matter.

More at Mother Jones, including several more audio recordings.

According to Mitch McConnell:

"For a fairly small state like ours to have someone who is a major player in the country is an enormous advantage to Kentucky because every time I'm in a negotiation, I always try to look for the things that I think will have the most adverse impact on us."

Entire video available at WBRD.

H/T Hillbilly Report

A group whose aim is to elect progressive Democrats to Congress released an ad Tuesday hitting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for opposing gun control legislation while receiving campaign donations from gun manufacturers.

The ad from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, is backed by a $27,700 buy and will run on broadcast and cable television in McConnell's home state, as well as in Washington, D.C.

The PCCC ad features Kentuckian Rodney Kendrick addressing the camera with his grandson on his lap, calling it “unthinkable that guns meant for war could be used on civilians and children.”

"I was born and raised right here in Kentucky," Kendrick says in the spot. "I served my country as a marksman and we were trained to use guns safely. It's unthinkable that guns meant for war could be used on civilians and children. As a gun owner and a veteran, I support the plan to ban assault weapons and keep guns out of the wrong hands, because I know these guns. I know what they can do."

"Senator Mitch McConnell has taken thousands of dollars from gun manufacturers, and he opposes common sense reforms," he continued. "Senator McConnell, whose side are you on?"

McConnell, who is serving his fifth term in the Senate, faces re-election next year, and is hoping to fend off any possible conservative primary challenges. Actress Ashley Judd has been mentioned as a potential Democratic rival.

The Hill reports:

The group also commissioned polling from Democratic firm Public Policy Polling that indicates Kentuckians do want to see movement on gun control, despite McConnell’s outspoken opposition to the measures proposed by President Obama.

Eighty-two percent of likely Kentucky voters support background checks “to keep guns out of the wrong hands,” while 13 percent oppose them, the poll found.

There is less consensus in the state, however, about proposals to ban assault weapons. Fifty percent of likely Kentucky voters surveyed support a ban, while 42 percent oppose one.

Adam Green, a former staffer for MoveOn.org and co-founder of the PCCC, said the group’s effort reflects a discrepancy between the senator’s legislative views and his constituents’ demands.

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In a revealing interview with The Wall Street Journal, House Speaker John Boehner discussed the conversations he had with President Obama during closed-door fiscal-cliff negotiations. Appearing to have a case of battle fatigue after weeks of negotiations, at one point in the interview Boehner said "I need this job like I need a hole in the head." He says he was most shocked by Obama saying that Washington doesn’t have a spending problem. The speaker, just entering his second term, also explained his notorious “Go f--k yourself” snap at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “I was in Ohio, and Harry’s on the Senate floor calling me a dictator and all kinds of nasty things. You know, I don’t lose my temper. I never do. But I was shocked at what Harry was saying about me,” he said. Boehner also discussed his decision to vote for the Senate tax package, saying a "no" vote would do "serious damage to the economy.”

"What stunned House Speaker John Boehner more than anything else during his prolonged closed-door budget negotiations with Barack Obama was this revelation: "At one point several weeks ago," Mr. Boehner says, "the president said to me, 'We don't have a spending problem.' "

"I am talking to Mr. Boehner in his office on the second floor of the Capitol, 72 hours after the historic House vote to take America off the so-called fiscal cliff by making permanent the Bush tax cuts on most Americans, but also to raise taxes on high earners. In the interim, Mr. Boehner had been elected to serve his second term as speaker of the House. Throughout our hourlong conversation, as is his custom, he takes long drags on one cigarette after another."

"Mr. Boehner looks battle weary from five weeks of grappling with the White House. He's frustrated that the final deal failed to make progress toward his primary goal of "making a down payment on solving the debt crisis and setting a path to get real entitlement reform." At one point he grimly says: "I need this job like I need a hole in the head."'

"The president's insistence that Washington doesn't have a spending problem, Mr. Boehner says, is predicated on the belief that massive federal deficits stem from what Mr. Obama called "a health-care problem." Mr. Boehner says that after he recovered from his astonishment—"They blame all of the fiscal woes on our health-care system"—he replied: "Clearly we have a health-care problem, which is about to get worse with ObamaCare. But, Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem." He repeated this message so often, he says, that toward the end of the negotiations, the president became irritated and said: "I'm getting tired of hearing you say that."'

"With the two sides so far from agreeing even on the nature of the country's fiscal challenge, making progress on how to address it was difficult. Mr. Boehner became so agitated with the lack of progress that he cursed at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "Those days after Christmas," he explains, "I was in Ohio, and Harry's on the Senate floor calling me a dictator and all kinds of nasty things. You know, I don't lose my temper. I never do. But I was shocked at what Harry was saying about me. I came back to town. Saw Harry at the White House. And that was when that was said," he says, referring to a pointed "go [blank] yourself" addressed to Mr. Reid."

"Mr. Boehner confirms that at one critical juncture he asked Mr. Obama, after conceding on $800 billion in new taxes, "What am I getting?" and the president replied: "You don't get anything for it. I'm taking that anyway."'

And here you have the latest go-to Republican talking point, "But, Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem."

Yet in the last year in the Budget Control Act, and the 2011 spring budget deal to avert a shutdown, Congress actually cut $1.5 trillion in spending. After reduced interest payments due to a smaller debt are factored in, a good deal more than $1.5 trillion is cut from spending. The interest savings amount to about $250 billion, bringing the total deficit reduction achieved to date to more than $1.7 trillion. And before that, there was the $700 billion in reduced Medicare spending passed in the Affordable Care Act in 2010.

We have indeed already confronted the "spending problem."

Not that this will keep the GOP from trying to do away with those pesky "entitlements."

Progress Kentucky, in partnership with The Action, held their first direct action in support of middle class tax cuts by targeting Senator Mitch McConnell at his house with "fiscal cliff caroling".

Progress Kentucky is a different kind of Super PAC: a grassroots movement that will use traditional media, new media, and direct action to hold Senator Mitch McConnell accountable for his failed record.