Senator Ted Kaufman (D - DE) will deliver a speech today that represents a potential turning point for the country. ...................... As part of that effort, we must ensure that the legal system tackles financial crimes with the same gravity as other crimes. When crimes happened in the past (as in the case of Enron, when aided and abetted by, among others, Merrill Lynch, and not prevented by the supposed gatekeepers at Arthur Andersen), there were criminal convictions. If individuals a...

Monday, Mar 15, 2010 17:20 EDT If we can't get single-payer... We'll settle for the public option. Um, Mr. President, didn't you support that in your campaign? By Tom Tomorrow (Link) (Image)

Source: Columbia Journal Review Blogs Beat the Press on the Lehman Brothers Scandal By Ryan Chittum And just like that the Lehman Brothers scandal drops off the front pages. And not just the front pages—the section fronts, too. Say, we just learned about a $50 billion fraud on Thursday. (Link)/ Think there might be some newsworthy follow-ups here? Actually there are, and both The New York Times and Wall Street Journal have them, but they stuff them inside. The Journal, which scored recently...

can i do that? kp (Image) Obama, followed by Rep. Marcia Fudge and Rep. Dennis Kucinich, walks down the stairs from Air Force One at Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport en route to Strongsville. | AP Photo

 
ROVE: We saw it in Honduras. Where rather than monitoring the situation, they (the Obama administration) let a cowboy president try to act in an extra-constitutional way to violate a fundamental principle in the Constitution, all without having done their homework in advance. more: (Link)

Monday, March 15, 2010 Pelosi discusses new option for passing HCR in House and get Reconciliation fix too by John Aravosis (DC) on 3/15/2010 07:13:00 PM One of the concerns that House Democrats have is that if they vote for the Senate health care reform bill, what assurances do they have that the Reconciliation fix (which would improve the conservative Senate bill, to some extent) will even come up in the House for a vote. One possible solution was explained to us this morning in our blogger m...

Glenn Beck ‘has teared up’ during rehearsals, staffers say By Sahil Kapur Monday, March 15th, 2010 -- 1:20 pm Glenn Beck received a mix of mockery and intrigue last year after crying several times on camera during his Fox News program. Now, the conservative lightning rod's assistants reportedly say he sheds the occasional tear even while rehearsing for the show. In a Post feature story about the controversial Fox host, Howard Kurtz writes, "Some staffers say they have watched rehearsals, on i...

Here are the words that were used most frequently by the 45 percent of the country who would tell their Congressman to vote for the health care bill: (Image) And here are the words used most commonly by the 48 percent of the country who would tell their Congressman to vote against it: (Image) (Link)

Source: Washington Independent DynCorp Wins Its Bid to Stop Blackwater’s Next Afghanistan Contract — for Now By Spencer Ackerman 3/15/10 1:22 PM As I reported last week, the Government Accountability Office has been reviewing for months a protest against a contract to train the Afghan police that Blackwater sought to win, even after Blackwater essentially stole weaponry intended for those selfsame Afghan cops. Today, the GAO’s acting general counsel, Lynn H. Gibson, effectively sided against ...

Source: Media Bistro Behar, Maddow Among GLAAD Award Recipients By Kevin Allocca Last night, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation held its 21st GLAAD Media Awards in New York City, and some newsers were among the 24 announced winners. HLN's Joy Behar received the Excellence in Media Award, which was presented by NBC "Today" show co-anchor Meredith Vieira (Behar tweeted this photo of the two of them.) "I'd rather have that than the Oscar," Behar told the Asbury Park Press. "It shows ...

"Benjamin Netanyahu now has the dubious distinction of being the only Israeli leader to ever salute a man who makes money from biblical prophesies suggesting Israel's imminent destruction while simultaneously humiliating the leaders (Joe Biden and Barack Obama) of the very country he relies on for its protection. Rachel Tabachnick writes in a new article published by Zeek magazine (a co-production of the Jewish Forward) there's evidence indicating that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyah...

This status quo on health care is simply unsustainable. We cannot have a system that works better for the insurance companies than it does for the American people. We know what will happen if we fail to act. We know our government will be plunged deeper into debt. We know millions more people will lose coverage. And we know that rising costs will saddle millions more families with unaffordable expenses – and will force many small businesses to drop coverage altogether. A study just came ou...

Now, conservative Israel supporters are pinning the blame on the Obama administration for the spat for daring to publicly air its differences with the Israeli government. Making reference to Clinton’s remarks, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who enjoys public grandstanding on other issues, urged the White House to be quiet on this one: “It was a dust-up, a misunderstanding. (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu has apologized, and the timing was unfortunate. But the second round of critici...

Cancer Patient Fired by Walmart for Legally Using Medical Marijuana Monday 15 March 2010 by: Mike Meno | AlterNet Joseph Casias, 29, has an inoperable brain tumor. Last November, Walmart fired him after 5 years on the job because he tested positive for (legal) marijuana. Despite his condition, he has dutifully gone to work every day for the last five years at a Walmart in Battle Creek, Michigan, where in 2008 he was named Associate of the Year. Casias is also a legal medical marijuana pat...

Source: Huffington Post MoveOn Fundraising Against Anti-Health Care Dems First Posted: 03-14-10 11:20 PM | Updated: 03-15-10 12:18 AM In a warning shot to wavering Democrats, the progressive action group MoveOn.org is making a major push to raise money on behalf of primary challengers to those House lawmakers who vote against health care reform. The group is set to blast out an email to its five million member list Monday asking recipients to pledge anywhere from $25 to $200 (or more) fo...

The right-wing of Democratic Party is the obstacle to passing health reform by: Chris Bowers Mon Mar 15, 2010 at 10:00 While Dennis Kucinich's opposition to the health reform bill has taken up a good deal of attention online, a look at the vote count shows that the difficulty in passing the health reform bill comes overwhelmingly from the right-wing of the party. Using Progressive Punch and David Dayen's latest whip count, here are how the "yes," "no" and "maybe" camps break down among Democr...

Source: New York Times Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants By DEXTER FILKINS and MARK MAZZETTI Published: March 14, 2010 KABUL, Afghanistan — Under the cover of a benign government information-gathering program, a Defense Department official set up a network of private contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan to help track and kill suspected militants, according to military officials and businessmen in Afghanistan and the United States. The official, Michael D. Furlong, hir...

“This is Starting to Get Dangerous” By Scott Horton Last week, Vice President Joe Biden was publicly slapped in the face by the Netanyahu Government during his trip to Jerusalem. The Israeli Government used the occasion to announce the settlement of 1,600 Israelis in Arab East Jerusalem, in defiance of America’s calls for a freeze on settlements. According to a report in Yedioth Ahronoth, Biden responded: “This is starting to get dangerous for us. What you’re doing here undermines the security...

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Source: Daily Kos Public Option in the reconciliation bill? What? by David Waldman Sun Mar 14, 2010 at 08:38:48 PM PDT Where the tips came from first, I have no idea. But without fanfare -- and you should perhaps take that as a clue -- the House Budget Committee has posted a 2,309 page bill (PDF)(Link) that purports to be the text of the upcoming reconciliation bill. And as early sneak-peekers saw almost right away, it appears to contain... the public option. But almost as quickly, denials (...

(Link) Political Insider A Southern soap opera within the Ray McBerry camp 4:09 pm March 14, 2010, by Jim Galloway Sounds like a peculiarly Southern soap opera is brewing with Ray McBerry’s Republican campaign for governor. The states’ rights candidate on Saturday sent out a long, long message to supporters that included these paragraphs: In recent weeks, I have been personally accused of, but not limited to, the following list of absurdities: that I attempted to have an affair with my ...

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Beyond politics Why Republicans should support health care reform By Ray LaHood March 14, 2010 I've been a Republican all my life, when I served in the Illinois legislature, when I worked for members of Congress and when I served in Congress. During the 2008 presidential election, I supported Republican Sen. John McCain. I have always been — and still am — a fiscal conservative, an advocate for a smart, but restrained, government. For those reasons and others, most people wouldn't expect me ...

The Twilight of the Elites By Christopher Hayes Thursday, Mar. 11, 2010 In the past decade, nearly every pillar institution in American society — whether it's General Motors, Congress, Wall Street, Major League Baseball, the Catholic Church or the mainstream media — has revealed itself to be corrupt, incompetent or both. And at the root of these failures are the people who run these institutions, the bright and industrious minds who occupy the commanding heights of our meritocratic order. In e...

An excellent point from Adam Serwer: If Karl Rove is really so “proud” to have been a part of waterboarding, then why is he so eager to insist that it’s not torture? (Link) One might add: Why was the Bush administration initially so eager to cover up its torture, and conduct its abuses in secret? Once the truth about the Bush administration’s policy of institutionalized torture came out, it turned out to be something that the right thinks works for it politically and they like to brag. But back...

(Image) (Image) "National Security Archive announces Rosemary Award" By Al Kamen The Washington Post March 12, 2010 2010 Rosemary Award for Worst Open Government Performance Goes to Federal Chief Information Officers' Council National Security Archive cites CIO Council for "lifetime failure" To address crisis in government e-mail preservation Disappearance of John Yoo e-mail shows CIOs missing in action; Latest debacle in two decades of red flags over saving official e-mail ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,...

................ In response to Palin's attack on Rep Grayson, Grayson actually complimented Palin. Grayson praised Palin for having a hand large enough to fit Grayson's entire name on it. He thanked Palin for alleviating the growing shortage of platitudes in Central Florida. Grayson added that Palin deserved credit for getting through the entire hour-long program without quitting. Grayson also said that Palin really had mastered Palin's imitation of Tina Fey imitating Palin. Grayson observed t...

March 13, 2010 Nato ‘covered up’ botched night raid in Afghanistan that killed five Jerome Starkey, Khataba Haji Sharabuddin holds up a photo of his sons, one a police commander, the other an attorney, who were among five people killed during a joint US-Afghan night raid in Paktia province Image :1 of 5 A night raid carried out by US and Afghan gunmen led to the deaths of two pregnant women, a teenage girl and two local officials in an atrocity which Nato then tried to cover up, survivors have...

Op-Ed Columnist The New Rove-Cheney Assault on Reality By FRANK RICH Published: March 13, 2010 .......................... Rove and his book are yesterday. Keep America Safe is on the march. Liz Cheney’s crackpot hit squad achieved instant notoriety with its viral video demanding the names of Obama Justice Department officials who had served as pro bono defense lawyers for Guantánamo Bay detainees. The video branded these government lawyers as “the Al Qaeda Seven” and juxtaposed their suppose...

Source: The Hill Gibbs: By next Sunday, healthcare reform will be 'law of the land' By Walter Alarkon - 03/14/10 09:59 AM ET White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the healthcare bill will pass by next weekend. "We'll have the votes when the House votes, I think, within the next week," Gibbs said on "Fox News Sunday." Gibbs added that those on next week's Sunday talk shows "will be talking about healthcare not as a presidential proposal but I think as the law of the land." President...