Many assume Angus King (I) would caucus with Democrats if elected to the U.S. Senate because he also supports President Obama for re-election, but the former Maine governor tells USA Today he hasn’t made a decision.

Said King: “I don’t know why they’re making that assumption. It’s all going to depend on what the situation is when I get there, and that will depend to some extent on what the numbers are… I might be able to make a pretty good arrangement that will allow me to maintain a significant amount of independence in exchange for one vote, perhaps, to organize the Senate. In other words, if all I have to do is vote once to organize the Senate and establish the majority leader and then I’m a free agent, that might be the way to do it.”

Joshua Green: “Let’s take only the Obama presidency. Had the filibuster not applied,
the United States would have a market-based system to control carbon
emissions, which would limit the damage from global warming, vitalize
the clean technology sector, and challenge other large polluters like
China and India to do the same. The new health care law would have a
public option. Children of undocumented immigrants who served two years
in the military or went to college could become US citizens. Women paid
less than their male colleagues because of their gender would have
broader legal recourse against their employers. Billionaires would not
be able to manipulate the political system from behind a veil of
anonymity.”

A video shows Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) received a less-than-hospitable reception at the Alaska Republican Party Convention as she tried to introduce Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY).

Alaska Dispatch: “Murkowski has faced some tough crowds in the past, particularly in 2010 when she was running for re-election against Joe Miller in the midst of a tea party uprising. But all of that was supposedly behind her. Her win in an historic write-in campaign against Miller seemed to take the wind out of the tea party movement in Alaska. For various reasons, like Alaska’s weird economy and geography, the tea party wasn’t gaining as much ground as in other states. That all seemed to change as Murkowski stood before her fellow Republicans at the Hilton in downtown Anchorage on Friday.”

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“The most articulate and talented teleprompter reader in America.”

— Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), quoted by the New York Times, mocking President Obama in 2010.

“I left my last page of the speech, does anyone have my last page? Did I Ieave it with you?”

— Rubio, while giving a speech today at the Brookings Institution.

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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) teaches a political science class at Florida International University in Miami “on Mondays and Fridays, when the Senate is typically off (a workload that provides its own instruction on how Washington operates),” the Tampa Bay Times reports.

“Rubio does not dish Senate gossip or inveigh against President Barack Obama, as he often does in his other job. His lectures are in every sense academic, students say, only drawn from real-time experience.”

A video shows Rubio teaching a class “on why political compromise is so elusive.”

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Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee (I) told WPRI-TV that when he was a Republican U.S. Senator he ate lunch each week with four other GOP moderates: Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, Jim Jeffords of Vermont and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. They referred to themselves as “the Mod Squad.”

“In 2001, Jeffords left the party to caucus with the Democrats. In 2006, Chafee lost his seat to Sheldon Whitehouse after a primary challenge from the right. In 2009, Specter switched parties and went on to lose his first Democratic primary. And on Tuesday, Snowe shocked Washington by announcing her retirement… The last remaining member is Collins, who was re-elected in 2008.”

In the mail: The Last Great Senate by Ira Shapiro.

The author spent 12 years working for Senators Gaylord Nelson, Abraham Ribicoff, Thomas Eagleton, Robert Byrd, and Jay Rockefeller and paints a “vivid portrait of the statesmen who helped steer America during the crisis years of the late 1970s, transcending partisanship and overcoming procedural roadblocks that have all but strangled the Senate since their departure.”

A security video of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) at a Nashville International Airport security checkpoint doesn’t show him being “irate,” as officials asserted in an incident reports when he refused a pat down.

Tennessean: “An incident report describes the police response as encountering ‘a passenger being irate.’ But videos released by the Metro Airport Authority late Wednesday show Paul entering the security line at 7:57 a.m. and then alternately sitting and standing in a glass cubicle while being watched by authorities. Paul appears to make a few phone calls as well. Paul is shown being escorted by an airport official at 9:04 a.m. Paul rebooked his flight and later went through security without incident.”

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Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) was hospitalized with a stroke over the weekend and underwent surgery today in Illinois, the Chicago Tribune reports.

National Journal reports Kirk “likely faces permanent physical damage and a long-term cognitive recovery after successful surgery.”

Just two months ago, Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) and Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) “wrote to the White House and nominated Joe Paterno for the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation’s highest civilian honor,” Politico reports.

Today, “less than 24 hours after the legendary football coach was fired following allegations that an assistant coach sexually abused multiple boys — that they were rescinding their support for Paterno’s nomination.”