So, basically, MA and VT can be screwed because they did the right thing years ago by extending Medicaid on their own dime! Thanks, Mr President. (Link) But Obama has asked Reid to strike a provision that would send $1.1 billion in extra Medicaid funding to Massachusetts and Vermont -- states that have already expanded Medicaid coverage but would otherwise not be reimbursed at the same level as states that would boost their Medicaid populations for the first time under the bill's mandate. "W...

I find this story fascinating. So many people bought it without any confirmation. (Link) 2GOOD2BTrue by digby In case you were wondering about that Justice Roberts resignation rumor, here's what apparently happened: Here’s an account of what went down in Professor Peter Tague’s criminal law class this morning, from a 1L at Georgetown Law: Today’s class was partially on the validity of informants not explaining their sources. started off class at around 9 am EST by telling us not to tell a...

(once again about cohesiveness, of course). (Link) Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change SIGN IN TO E-MAIL PRINT SINGLE PAGE SHARE By MERRILL A. McPEAK Published: March 4, 2010 ... Seventeen years ago, the chiefs — all four of us, plus the chairman and vice chairman — concluded that allowing open homosexuality in the ranks would probably damage the cohesiveness of our combat units.

You could think that protecting our kids, particularly the weakest, by preventing harmful practices would be something that everybody would agree too, at at least that would be voted without partisan split. You would be wrong. All but 24 GOP congressman opposed a bill that was doing exactly that. Shame on them. (Link) H R 4247 YEA-AND-NAY 3-Mar-2010 4:32 PM QUESTION: On Passage BILL TITLE: Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in Schools Act (Link) It focuse...

(Link) Despite his roots, Obama struggles to show he's connected to middle class Now, I like the title. Could it be because he is not trying to be phony like Bush that our elite media thinks he does not connect. And who cares what the reporter saw. Polls say he connects well. His visit to Nashua was his fourth domestic trip in less than two weeks, and it included a stop at a small business and a question-and-answer session in a high school gymnasium. He took off his jacket during his spee...

(Link) Kerry And Feingold Slam Supreme Court In Hearing On Campaign Finance Ruling 2/2/2010 12:36 PM ET (RTTNews) - Senators John Kerry, D-Mass., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis., testified before a Senate Committee on Rules and Administration hearing Tuesday, criticizing the Supreme Court's decision to ease restrictions on the amount of money corporations, unions and non-profit organizations can spend to support political candidates ... "The Supreme Court has issued a decision inflating the spe...

I am sorry, but if this is true, this is stupid. More likely, Axelrod is feeding BS to the media. This administration started healthcare with 58 Democrats in the Senate. They added Specter and finally, Franken was elected. None of these two seats were a sure thing when they started to talk about healthcare. There were now 60 Democrats, at least 7 or 8 are Democrats from states having a Republican governor. Anything happening to them (a serious accident, death, ...) and they would be replaced...

Kudos for them for trying. Sadly, it will probably fail thanks to Nelson (which probably explains why Lieberman signed this letter). (Link) A group of powerful Senate Democrats is urging leadership today to repeal the federal anti-trust exemption that insurance companies have enjoyed for more than six decades. In a letter to President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the Democrats argue that state regulators simply “lack the time and ...

Hello Friend, Not a lot of time left, so here are the three quick reasons why I need you to dig deep and help Martha Coakley in these final crucial days in her slugfest down to the wire battle against the national Republican Party and the powerful special interest bankrolling his campaign: 1. It's not the Massachusetts way to see the seat Ted Kennedy served in for 47 years handed off to someone who has pledged again and again to destroy Ted's life's work - health care reform. 2. It's wrong ...

(Link)/ ... Both major-party candidates for Senate reflect something of that mood. Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley, after more than two decades in law enforcement, is no pie-in-the-sky dreamer. Thoughtful and empirical, she views issues like a lawyer building a case. She promises hard work and no illusions. And in some cases, that means scaling back the ambition of government programs to carefully monitor what works and what doesn't. Like the consumer-protection lawyer she is, she lo...

You may not like her. She may not have been your candidate during the election. It was not mine. But the implications in terms of politics of her loss will be more centrist wishy washy policies. Digby says that a lot better than I can. (Link) Obviously, the question is why and one assumes that the main reason is that unemployment is still very high and people are starting to get a bit panicked that it's not coming back right away. (I'm guessing that the spectacle of wealthy bankers complain...

A lot of noise is and will be made about Mark Halperin's book concerning the 08 campaign. Yes, he is reporting a few embarrassing things about Democrats, if true. Embarrassing, but are they really important? Some here may want to remember who Halperin Hero is: Drudge, and credited him for defeating Kerry. This should be enough for us to dismiss what he writes, may be, as unimportant. (Link) Harris and Halperin call Drudge the "single most influential purveyor of information about American po...

At least somebody with some common sense. (Link) Oh, Christ -- in the Massachusetts Senate race, are we about to play another round of GOP Failure = Success? ... A Brown win remains improbable, given that Democrats outnumber Republicans by 3 to 1 in the state and that Ms. Coakley, the state's attorney general, has far more name recognition, money and organizational support. But a tighter-than-expected margin in the closely watched race would still prompt soul-searching among Democrat...

First, it is important to know that Senator Kerry is one of those who have proposed this idea initially, and that he intended it as a way not the employee like the right wanted it to be. This said, honest people have long exposed the problem with the tax as it is written. I am among the skeptic (even if Kerry is my senator and I respect him for trying). But here is the post he had today on the Hill and Huffinton Post, and we should all appreciate when people try an honest conversation, rather t...

He may be correct, but guess who he would have blamed? (Link) (video at link) en. John McCain (R-AZ) said today that he didn't think the late Sen. Ted Kennedy would appreciate that health care reform was passed "on a party line vote." McCain slammed the Senate bill because "there has never been a major reform accomplished in the history of this country that wasn't bipartisan." He also said: "Senator Kennedy would appreciate the outcome. I don't think he would appreciate it on a party line vo...

(Not sure I agree with him, but it is worth a read, given that Reich has been very a harsh critic of the process) (Link)/ Slouching Toward Health Care Reform "Don't make the perfect the enemy of the better," says the President and congressional insiders when confronted with the sorry spectacle of a health-care bill whose scope and ambition continue to shrink, and whose long-term costs to typical Americans continue to grow. They're right, of course. But by the same logic, neither the White Ho...

Things are not always as easy as they seem as why the Medicare Buy in was killed. Of course, all of the bad guys (Lieberman, Nelson, Landrieu), who did not want an extension of Medicare or any other public option, pp[psed oy/ But many other people, who are liberal and want the public option, voiced serious concerns about it. (Link) The letter to Reid said the senators "fear that provider shortages in states with low reimbursement rates such as ours will make such a program ineffective, or eve...

I never considered Time choices for their men of the Year as worth it (short of a couple more than obvious ones like Obama), but this one makes me perplex. Bernanke? Really? I agree with yglesias that this choice tells a lot about who we are (or at least who the editorial board of Time magazine is). (Link)(Matthew+Yglesias)&utm_content=Google+Reader All Hail Bernanke! Time giving Ben Bernanke it’s Person of the Year honors seems to me to say a lot about where we are as a society. Bernanke ...

While I am sure her political views are as atrocious as her (soon to be ex-)husband, I have some admiration for a woman who refused to stand by her man and play the good wife. (Link)

Thanks to digby for this post. I saw Conrad and Gregg engaging their little colloquy, and was wondering why nobody seemed to care about what was going on. by digby ... Today, Senators Gregg and Conrad had a colloquy on the floor of the Senate arguing for the Pete Peterson Foundation's pet project, the Bipartisan Committee To Destroy Social Security and Medicare So Wealthy People Don't Ever Have To Pay Higher Taxes (aka "Our Favorite Idea That's Been Lying Around".) And quite an exchang...

(Link) How a Few Private Health Insurers Are on the Way to Controlling Health Care The public option is dead, killed by a handful of senators from small states who are mostly bought off by Big Insurance and Big Pharma or intimidated by these industries' deep pockets and power to run political ads against them. Some might say it's no great loss at this point because the Senate bill Harry Reid came up with contained a public option available only to 4 million people, which would have been far t...

AN editorial that makes sense and is honest, recognizing the potential downfalls of the plan, and recognizing we know little about it at this point. (as always, read the full editorial) ... We won’t know if this compromise does that until the Congressional Budget Office has evaluated it. But we admire the senators’ desire to try to move reform legislation forward. ... As currently embodied in the Senate bill, the public plan would be sold only on new insurance exchanges that would be open j...

After COBRA subsidies at the end of last month, in a virtually total silence, here is another protection for the unemployed that could expire, if Congress does not take action quickly. Happy to see that Reid and Hoyer have that in their radar, but with so many things on the table and Republican obstructionism, this is frightening at the least for these families. (Link) Study: Millions to Prematurely Lose Unemployment Benefits Federal Program Set to Expire in December For millions of unemplo...

I cant say I am thrilled by hearing names like Pryor (from the Family), and Snowe or Collins in this negotiation, but this needs to end. So, hopefully, Obama can remind these people they are Democrats (well Pryor and Lincoln, as well as Nelson and Webb) too, not GOP surrogates. (Link) Obama to Rally Senate Democrats on Health-Care Plan (Update2) By Laura Litvan Dec. 6 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama went to the U.S. Capitol to urge Senate Democrats to agree on health legislation as la...

Happy to see somebody ask the hard questions. (Link) Sen. Bob Menendez harshly questions President Obama’s strategy for Afghanistan Thursday, December 3, 2009 BY HERB JACKSON The Record Sen. Bob Menendez harshly questioned President Obama’s strategy for Afghanistan this morning, interrupting Secretary of State Hillary of Clinton during a hearing and calling the promise to begin withdrawing troops in July 2011 “as solid as quicksand.” Menendez challenged the Obama administration’s top milit...

I have always been a strong supporter of the public option, but, after so much watering down, I am starting to wonder if it still means something. This is why I was wondering about what Ezra Klein is proposing here. Rather than continuing to watering it down to a point where it does not mean anything in order to gain votes, why not try actually get something valuable in exchange from it? It used to be what negotiation meant: i do something for you if you do something for us. (Granted, the GOP ...

(Link) [div class="excerpt"[ (Image) The punch line -- hardee har! -- is that news of the baby girl's birth had to be telegrammed to her mother, who had missed the plane on which the surprise birth occurred. What's the connection to the birthers? If Barack Obama had actually been born in Kenya, then his mother would have to have been in Kenya too! I don't think anyone is suggesting that his mother was other than the one he has always claimed, Stanley Ann Dunham. Presumably somewhere in the pass...

I was already mad at John Stewart yesterday when we reached this interview (the previous segment was about Afghanistan and he found funny to repeat the MSM memes about Kerry there, but at least this was just mimicking the Village eldern), but when this segment reminds us that Stewart is not necessarily well informed on the issues. (Link)/ (See video at link) Jon Stewart Praises ‘SuperFreak’ Author: ‘I’m Sorry You’ve Taken So Much S**t’ from Think Progress by Brad On last night’s Daily Show,...

(Link)/ Atheist-based business offers fundies adoption service for dogs left behind by The Rapture (Image) What a hilarious, brilliant idea. Christians who believe they’ll vanish from Earth in the rapture can now hire an atheist to care for their pets. For $110, Eternal Earth-Bound Pets offers a 10-year contract guaranteeing that an atheist will adopt the pet that’s left behind by its raptured owner. Additional pets can be covered for $15. has guaranteed atheist reps in 22 state...

(Link) Trigger Unhappy by digby So the rumor is that President Obama is pressuring Harry Reid to put Rahm's trigger into the Senate health care bill but that Reid is resisting. True story or kabuki dance? Who knows? The White House denies the specifics, but there's reason, based on past behavior, that they are so enamored of having Olympia Snowe on board so they have accepted triggers and expect Reid to back their "deal." But triggers are unacceptable, for reasons that have been spelled out...