David Vitter, “the Louisiana senator and other Republicans have pounced on the bankruptcy of Fremont, Calif.-based Solyndra Inc., saying the White House rushed to approve a loan guarantee to the politically connected company without adequate oversight,” AP writes. “But Vitter was not always so critical of the loan program. Documents obtained by The Associated Press show he wrote to the Energy Department at least seven times since 2009 seeking money for projects that would benefit his home state.”

“Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) was for investing in renewable energy before he was against it,” Talking Points Memo writes.

Bloomberg highlights the political problem of Eric Cantor’s original stance that disaster funds need to be offset: “With few, if any, homes insured against earthquakes, there is ‘widespread damage and people can’t afford to fix it,’ said Mineral Vice Mayor Bernice Wilson-Kube. Cantor’s constituents ‘expect him to help us’ get federal aid… The back-to-back disasters highlight the fiscal and political dilemma confronting Cantor and other Republican deficit cutters when the need for federal assistance is in their own backyards. The House plans to debate increasing emergency disaster funding this week.”

“That Kara Kennedy died at age 51, leaving behind two teen-age children, one of whom’s birthday is today, is the latest tragedy to befall her prominent political family,” the Boston Globe’s Johnson writes. “That she survived the past nine years after being diagnosed with supposedly inoperable lung cancer is a tribute to but one member: her late father, Senator Edward M. Kennedy. With characteristic zeal and a stubbornness he displayed in fighting his own terminal brain cancer, the senator refused to accept the initial diagnosis in 2002 from the doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He pushed until he found doctors at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who felt they they had a reasonable chance of success at treating his only daughter.”