Gregarius

Tonight's Rescue is brought to you by jlms qkw, HoosierDeb, dopper0189, shayera, and ItsJessMe, with vcmvo2 editing.

The diaries up for rescue tonight are:

• hepshiba explores myth-making as a purposeful tool and discusses who uses it to the best advantage in Terrorist Attacks on American Soil: Right Wing Rhetoric #2. (HoosierDeb)
• Roy Eidelson explains how shared outrage generates the feelings of solidarity that coalitions are made of: In Praise of Shared Outrage. (dopper0189)
• Families and religion can be...intense. DaNang65 pays tribute to his recently departed mother, in Amazing Grace. (ItsJessMe)
• CharlotteLucas writes a loving tribute to family in He Brought His Irish Heart To San Francisco. (vcmvo2)
• I T has some Surfliner Stories: when the train is delayed. (shayera)
• desmoinesdem shares a richly-linked analysis of the Republican side in IA-Gov: A closer look at the Rod Roberts campaign. (jlms qkw)
• Aris D sees inspiration and encouragement in a most unlikely place in A United Destiny, For Better or For Worse. (HoosierDeb)
• Inspector Dim delves into a personal ordeal to illustrate the need for health care reform now in 1,461 Straight Days With A Constant Headache. (HoosierDeb)
• rossl looks for radicalism in Where have you gone, Albert Einstein? (jlms qkw)
• IndieArmyWife shares the realities of being a military spouse in A Life Like No Other. (shayera)

jotter has High Impact Diaries: March 15, 2010.

brillig brings tonight's Top Comments - Do As I Say Edition.

Enjoy and please join us by suggesting your own favorite diaries from the past twenty-four hours in this Open Thread!

Earlier today, General David Petraeus testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee and said that:

... “the time has come” to consider repealing the ban on open gay military service, caveating it by saying that a thorough and “thoughtful” study of the issue needs to consider the effects on a military at war.

Now this isn't exactly going out on a limb given that Defense Secretary Gates announced last month that a review on the policy was underway, but if Petraues does come out in favor of repealing "don't ask, don't tell," will it still be unpatriotic and disloyal to disagree with him?

Yesterday was a travel day, so I didn't catch this excellent editorial at the NYT until this morning.

We strongly support a woman’s right to choose and are disturbed by the restrictions in both the House and Senate bills on a woman’s ability to buy insurance that covers abortions. But the opportunity to provide coverage for 30 million of the uninsured — and more security for all Americans — is too important to miss.

We are puzzled and dismayed that these legislators are willing to waste that opportunity because they say the onerous anti-abortion provisions in the Senate’s bill are still not onerous enough....

Representative Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat, says that unless the Senate’s anti-abortion provisions are strengthened, perhaps a dozen House Democrats who voted for the House version won’t vote for the Senate’s bill. Before they push their party’s signature domestic issue over a cliff they need to recognize how incredibly restrictive the Senate’s provisions already are.

Most of these restrictions would apply to insurance policies sold on new exchanges where individuals and small businesses could choose from an array of private plans. The Senate bill would allow any state to ban insurers on the state’s exchanges from offering policies that cover abortion. In states that don’t impose that ban, the exchanges would be required to offer at least one policy that excludes abortion coverage. They would not be required to offer policies that cover abortions....

All people who buy a policy that covers abortions — not just those receiving tax credits to help buy insurance — would have to divide their premium payment in two: a small part (at least $1 a month) to cover the plan’s projected cost of paying for abortions and a much bigger payment for the rest of the premium. The insurers would have to keep two separate accounts for the subsidized group, one to pay for abortions and one for all other care. It would be so cumbersome that it would likely discourage insurers from offering plans that cover abortion.

Those restrictions are a blatant government interference in a serious health care decision that should be made by a woman and her doctor. But for some House members they are still not enough....

Abortion is a legal and medically valid procedure that should be covered by insurance — without government interference. Legislators who support abortion rights are the only ones who have given ground in the interests of passing health care reform. Anti-abortion Democrats need to show similar statesmanship and accept the Senate’s restrictive provisions. They owe it to all Americans.

The NYT calls for the bill's passage despite the massive erosion to choice this bill portends: yet another effort to challenge a woman's right to choose, this time by trying to legislate what private insurers' can do in covering legal procedures. Despite this significant step backward for women, Planned Parenthood is joining in the call for passage of this bill, and telling Congress what is at stake.

That's Tiffany Campbell, a mother of three from South Dakota, and this is her story.

In 2006 I became pregnant and was thrilled. After landing in the hospital with a severe kidney infection at 19-weeks gestation, I received my first ultrasound, leaving us shocked and thrilled to see we were expecting identical twin boys.

The joy didn’t last when our babies were diagnosed with Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome. Webmd.com describes Twin-Twin transfusion syndrome as "the most serious complication of identical twins. It starts in the womb when one twin gets too much blood and the other not enough. The outcome for both twins is grim."

Severe TTTS has a 60-100 percent likelihood of fetal or neonatal mortality rate. We were sent to one of the premier fetal care centers in the country and told our only hope for saving this pregnancy was to have a selective termination on the one of the babies, and hope the other twin would survive....

I never thought I would have to once again open deep wounds and share my deeply personal story, but then the Stupak-Pitts Amendment was added to the House version of the Affordable Health Care for America Act. The selective termination that saved my baby’s life would not be covered under the Stupak-Pitts Amendment.

The total bill from the fetal care center was just over $220,000. Add the care for the entire pregnancy and the cost was well over $500,000.  We were fortunate that our insurance covered 80% of the costs. Had they not, I’m not sure what we would have done. Why should I have to choose between having a life-saving procedure that will most likely put us into bankruptcy while at the same time forcing me to choose between the best interests of our much wanted unborn child versus the best interests of our other two children? After three years we have finally paid off our share of bills from that pregnancy.

Progressives are swallowing hard and lining up to support this bill they find deeply flawed in any number of ways, because the whole of what the bill accomplishes is better than the status quo. At the same time, though, on the issue of abortion it is definitely a loss, so those 41 pro-choice members who signed a letter to Pelosi pledging a vote against any bill with Stupak language need to get to work immediately after passage of this bill to fix the nearly-as-bad Senate language.

Nonetheless, like most liberals who are disappointed at the range of lost opportunities this bill represents, I think that clearly the greater lost opportunity at this point would be killing it. And at this point, if that happens, it's likely to be the Stupak crowd that does it.

And where does a spurned Democrat go? To Fox News.

"Has the Speaker come to you since I last spoke to you last week," said Van Susteren "or even Congressman Steny Hoyer, anyone come to you in the top leadership and talked to you, said down and said, you know, What's your problem?"

Stupak's answer: "No."

"Don't you find that unusual, if they want you and your 11 others?" Van Susteren asked.

Stupak said no, he did not find it usual. When asked why, he said: "Because they disagree me with on the issue, so they'll wait until the last minute and see if they can run -- do an end run, get the votes without us."

Because "they disagree" with him "on the issue," he says, not because he's been totally intransigent prick who is willing to kill health insurance reform if he doesn't achieve his goal of making sure health insurance no longer covers abortion. But it's also likely because leadership is indeed peeling Stupak supporters away, and his threat is becoming less credible.

What's wrong with "objective" journalism today? Here's a clue, from AP, doing a story about the "deem and pass" process under consideration to pass the health care bill:

WASHINGTON --It is a brazen abuse of Congress' rules. Or a legitimate tactic used many times by both parties.

Five hundred words later, I promise you, the reader is no wiser as to whether it's an abuse of rules or a legitimate tactic used many times. One byline and three other people listed as contributing to this report, and no one bothers to tally up how many times it's been used (if at all), or whether both parties have used it. Just quotes from politicians and leadership on each side. A bit more:

Using rhetoric reminiscent of the tea party movement, the GOP says Democrats are flagrantly ignoring the will of the American people by trying to pass the legislation to reshape the U.S. health care system without a direct House vote on the bill approved by the Senate in December.

Democrats responded Tuesday that the moves they are contemplating have been used by both parties numerous times to pass legislation such as huge increases in the government's ability to borrow money, restrictions on immigrant workers and creation of a presidential line-item veto, which was later ruled unconstitutional.

And so on. Hundreds of words like that--one paragraph relaying what the Republicans are saying, the next what Democrats are saying. Alternating accusations, sans fact-checking, make up the entirety of the story.

Compare that to David Waldman's explanation of the parliamentary maneuver. Or, to be non-Daily Kos-centric, check in with Ezra Klein. Or Marc Ambinder. Or Harold Meyerson. Any one of these people alone are shedding infinitely more light on the subject than the AP report is.

Really, this is the worst sort of stenographic "he said"/"she said." If anyone can read that whole story and find one thing of value, one nugget of clarification or knowledge that it brings to the current debate, please post it in comments. Because from here, it looks like a waste of four "journalists" standing next to arguing speakers, fighting over who can hold the microphones closest to the mouths of power.

It'd be nice to think that somehow, there's more to this journalism thing than that. But the important thing, of course, is that these reporters could pick up the phone and get access for these oh-so-enlightening quotes. Hard to see how the republic could survive without it.

The unions are serious about fighting back against Democrats who oppose the health care reform bill:

As I first reported here, SEIU is threatening to withold support from House Dems who may vote against the health care bill, informing them that a No vote could mean they face a labor-backed challenge from the left.

Now the SEIU is seriously cranking up the heat on one of these Dems, New York Rep Mike McMahon, with a brutal full-page ad set to run tomorrow in the large-circulation Staten Island Advance. It depicts a child in intensive care and calls on McMahon to vote for health reform, lest families go without the “lifesaving medical care they need”:

“Congressman McMahon has indicated to us that he intends to vote no on the healthcare reform bill,” the ad says. “We strongly urge Congressman McMahon to reconsider his vote.”

There are two clear messages here from SEIU: vote for the health care reform bill and stop taking us for granted.

A question to ask next week and this fall:

Writing earlier today, Howard Kurtz argues that President Obama's interview tomorrow on Fox is a sign that the White House accepts Fox's argument that it is is a traditional news operation, at least by day.

This [the Fox interview] would be unremarkable -- the president is constantly on TV -- except for last year's White House campaign attacking Fox News as an arm of the Republican Party. Fox executives insisted there is an important distinction between its news operation and opinionated hosts such as Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. In sitting down with Baier, Obama -- who cordially greeted Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes at a White House Christmas party -- seems to be accepting that distinction.

On the surface, that sounds reasonable, but let's get some context. Here's White House Communications Director Anita Dunn last October answering a question about whether President Obama would do interviews with Fox:

The answer is yes, obviously he’ll go on Fox because he engages with ideological opponents. And he has done that before. He will do it again. I can’t give you a date because, frankly, I can’t give you dates for anybody else right now.

But what I will say is that when he goes on FOX, he understands that he is not going on — it really is not a news network at this point. He’s going to debate the opposition. And that’s fine. He never minds doing that.

So either Obama thinks Fox has changed since October (unlikely) or he is simply sitting down with what he considers to be an unfriendly media outlet (far more likely). But he's definitely not implicitly accepting Fox's argument that they were right all along. And given that Dunn said Obama would go back on Fox (this will be the second time since October), this is certainly not remarkable.

Oh, and by the way, do you know whose question Dunn was answering?

That's right: it was Howard Kurtz's.

The White House issued this statement from the President today:

As Sunshine Week begins, I want to applaud everyone who has worked to increase transparency in government and recommit my administration to be the most open and transparent ever, an effort that will strengthen our democracy and ensure the public's trust in their government.

We came to Washington to change the way business was done, and part of that was making ourselves accountable to the American people by opening up our government. We've put our White House visitor records on the Internet for the first time in history; opened up more government information than ever before on Data.gov, Recovery.gov and USAspending.gov; and issued an Executive Order fighting unnecessary secrecy, to name a few.

We are proud of these accomplishments, but our work is not done. We will continue to work toward an unmatched level of transparency, participation and accountability across the entire Administration.

At the same time, we learn this:

The White House has renewed its threat to veto the fiscal 2010 intelligence authorization bill over a provision that would force the administration to widen the circle of lawmakers who are informed about covert operations and other sensitive activities. . . .

In a letter sent to the senior members of the intelligence panels, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter R. Orszag said Gang of Eight notifications are made in only "the most limited of circumstances" affecting "vital interests" of the United States, arguing that the new requirement would "undermine the president's authority and responsibility to protect sensitive national security information."

This after a year-long process in which the intelligence committee has significantly watered down their original intent. Glenn:

To their credit, Congressional Democrats -- over the objections of right-wing Republicans -- have been attempting since the middle of last year to fix this serious problem, by writing legislation to severely narrow the President's power to conceal intelligence activities from the Senate and House Intelligence Committees and abolish the "Gang of Eight" process.  After all, those Committees were created in the wake of the intelligence abuses uncovered by the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, and their purpose is "to provide vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States to assure that such activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States."  But if they're not even told about what the Executive Branch is doing in the intelligence realm, then they obviously can't exert oversight and ensure compliance with the law -- which is the purpose of keeping them in the dark, as the last decade demonstrated.

Yet these efforts to ensure transparency and oversight have continuously run into one major roadblock:  Barack Obama's threat to veto the legislation.  Almost immediately after leading Democrats on the Intelligence Committee unveiled their legislation last year, the Obama White House issued a veto threat with extremely dubious (and Bush-replicating) rationales:  such oversight would jeopardize secrecy and intrude into "executive privilege."  In response to Obama's veto threat, Democrats spent the last nine months accommodating the White House's objections by significantly diluting their legislation -- their new bill would actually retain the "Gang of Eight" briefings but impose notification and other oversight requirements -- and two weeks ago the House passed that diluted bill.  ...

It's critical to note that this is far from an abstract concern, because the Obama administration has almost certainly been hiding intelligence activities from the Intelligence Committees, thus ensuring it operates without oversight.  Read this October, 2009 article from The Hill -- headlined:  "Feingold sees similarities between Bush and Obama on intelligence sharing" -- in which Senate Intelligence Committee Member Russ Feingold explains "his suspicion that the Obama administration is continuing some of the stonewalling practices of the George W. Bush administration when it comes to providing full intelligence briefings to the relevant committees in Congress."  And indeed, all year long, there's been a series of disclosures about highly controversial intelligence programs that appear to be "off-the-books" and away from the oversight of the Intelligence Committee.  In late January, it was revealed that the President was maintaining a "hit list" of American citizens he had authorized to be assassinated far from any "battlefield," followed by yesterday's story describing the use of shadowy private contractors to collect intelligence in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

A true departure from the practices of the Bush administration would not just be paying lip service to transparency, but to actually provide it. Note that in the case of intelligence briefings, we're not even talking about public transparency--we're talking about a restoration to the checks and balances, restoring Congress's constitutional role of oversight.

And it's not just on the national security and intelligence realms. From the torture photos to the private deal brokered with PhRMA in the health reform negotiations, the Obama administration has done a piss poor job on the transparency front in its first year.

At least for today, it appears that the global epicenter of stupid is in Washington, DC, where they are buzzing manically about Speaker Pelosi's diabolical plan to pass health care reform without actually having a vote on the Senate health care bill.

The implication -- that the House will approve health reform without voting on it -- is utterly baseless as David Waldman detailed earlier today. There will be a vote on health care reform, and nobody is suggesting otherwise.

But, as David has explained before, the final vote in the House won't be a simple vote on the Senate health care bill. Instead, it will be a vote on a resolution which effectively passes and amends the Senate health care bill at the same time.

So why don't Democrats do it the FNC/RNC way and have the final vote be on the Senate bill?

Simple: because the Senate bill is not the final health care reform measure. And the House is working to structure its final vote to ensure that the Senate bill does not become law without being amended.

In so doing, the House is trying to do the responsible thing, eliminating any chance of the Senate bill passing without reconciliation fixes, thereby making sure that we end up with the best possible policy.

Sure, the House could trust the Senate to do the right thing. But if they can structure things to make sure the Senate does the right thing, why shouldn't they?

Obviously, it creates an opportunity for Republicans to attack, but anything Democrats do creates an opportunity for attack. More importantly, this isn't about politics. Everybody knows there will be a vote. No matter what, people will know who was for reform and who was against reform. The question is whether we'll end up with the best possible reform package, and the approach being worked on in the House is merely an effort to ensure that we do.

Here's something I bet you thought you'd never see!

According to GOP aides, the resolution would require the House to hold an up-or-down vote on the Senate healthcare bill.

What? Republicans demanding an up-or-down vote on healthcare? Huzzah!

But what could possibly be going on here? We need more context.

House GOP leaders will try to force the House to vote on the Senate’s healthcare bill.

Rep. Parker Griffith (R-Ala.), who defected from the Democratic Party last December out of frustration on healthcare, will offer a resolution barring Democratic leaders from using the so-called “Slaughter solution.”

Ah, I get it now! Republicans think they deserve to have an up-or-down vote on the Senate bill, but the Senate doesn't!

Why are we going through this self-executing rule exercise in the first place? Because Senate Republicans won't allow an up-or-down vote on making the changes contained in the fix bill. If they'd agree to an up-or-down vote on that, then the House could drop the self-executing rule (scary!) plan and the use of reconciliation (nuclear!) completely, and we could just have a good ol' fashioned who's-got-the-most kind of vote.

Which Republicans would then lose.

Which is why they instead find themselves shamelessly screaming for up-or-down votes on healthcare, after all this time dedicating themselves to preventing exactly that.

You really can't make this stuff up.

• Get your bids in now because the Netroots Nation spring auction closes today.
• There really isn't anything that the Party of No will support:

  A group of Republicans this afternoon will meet with reporters to protest the Democrats’ plans to eliminate tens of billions of dollars in government subsidies to private companies that lend to students. The Democrats’ bill would have students borrow directly from the U.S. Treasury, which makes sense to supporters because it’s the Treasury that currently assumes all the risk for those loans anyway — a boon to private companies that assume no risk. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that eliminating the private middleman will save $67 billion over the next decade, most of which will go toward expanding college scholarships to low-income students.

• Birther queen Orly Taitz is still on the hook for the $20,000 fine levied against her last year for filing frivolous lawsuits.
• Do you want to get under Karl Rove's skin? Talk about his family.
• What are independent voters thinking?

  Of the independents polled in Colorado, New Hampshire, and Nevada by Benenson Strategy on behalf of the Service Employees International Union for a survey released Monday afternoon, 32 percent said they'll vote for a Democrat, 33 percent said they'll vote for a Republican, and 34 percent were unsure.

  And they didn't like either party's performance in Congress, but a clear advantage went to Democrats: independents: Dems collected a 33 percent approval/64 percent disapproval rating; Republicans, 26 percent approval/71 percent disapproval.  [...]

  And they want Congress to do something on health care: 69 percent of Independents said that health care is "an urgent problem that requires immediate action" or "serious problem that should be dealt with as soon as possible"--though 63 percent said Democrats had cut "too many deals with special interest groups such as pharmaceutical companies" as a prime complaint with health reform.

• Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) calls the health care reform bill "an abortion," while pandering to a crowd of teabaggers.
• From those crazy kids at Conservapedia:

  Conservapedia deftly navigates once again, between the shoals of 10th century scholarship, and disassociative schizophrenia.

  

• Dedicated or nuts ... you make the call.
• Folks in Southern California got an early wake-up call this morning, courtesy of a 4.4 earthquake. No damages or injuries were reported.
• It's a political junkie's dream come true:

  Researchers, political satirists and partisan mudslingers, take note: C-Span has uploaded virtually every minute of its video archives to the Internet.

  The archives, at C-SpanVideo.org, cover 23 years of history and five presidential administrations and are sure to provide new fodder for pundits and politicians alike. The network will formally announce the completion of the C-Span Video Library on Wednesday.

• Ezra Klein has a few words about David Brooks' latest realty-challenged op-ed:

  Brooks isn't wrong in the sense that "I disagree with him." He's wrong in the sense that the column requires a correction.

In the House, Republicans are going to do their damnedest to derail the health insurance reform bill by trying to force a vote on whether Pelosi can use a self-executing rule.

"If passed by the House, the resolution would prohibit Speaker Pelosi from implementing the ‘Slaughter Solution,’ the scheme by which Democratic leaders are seeking to ‘deem’ the Senate bill as passed without an actual vote in the House," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for the Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio.

That's the "scheme" that Republicans used dozens of times when they had control of the House, of course. Over on the other side of the Hill, Senate Republicans are still whining about reconciliation, and even have enlisted Bobo to the cause. I'll let Ezra do the debunking since he did it so well.

But none of Brooks's evidence is true. Literally none of it. The budget reconciliation process was used six times between 1980 and 1989. It was used four times between 1990 and 1999. It was used five times between 2000 and 2009. And it has been used zero times since 2010. Peak reconciliation use, in other words, was in the '80s, not the Aughts. The data aren't hard to find. They were published on Brooks's own op-ed page.

Nor has reconciliation been limited to bills with "significant bipartisan support." To use Brooks's example of the tax cuts, the 2003 tax cuts passed the Senate 50-50, with Dick Cheney casting the tie-breaking vote. Two Democrats joined with the Republicans in that effort. Georgia's Zell Miller, who would endorse George W. Bush in 2004 and effectively leave the Democratic Party, and Nebraska's Ben Nelson. So I'd say that's one Democrat. One Democrat alongside 49 Republicans. That's not significant bipartisan support....

To recap, Brooks argued that reconciliation is being used more frequently, and that past reconciliation bills, like Bush's tax cuts and prescription drug benefit, were significantly bipartisan. Reconciliation is, in fact, being used less frequently, past reconciliation bills like the tax cuts were not significantly bipartisan by any stretch of the imagination, and the prescription drug benefit did not go through reconciliation. Brooks isn't wrong in the sense that "I disagree with him." He's wrong in the sense that the column requires a correction.

David Brooks? Correction? Yeah, that'll happen. Since the GOP's case against the use of reconciliation is so weak that they have to rely on Bobo to lie about it for them, they need an ace in the hole to derail this, and to that end they only hope to bury it in amendments [sub req.]:

Senior Republican leadership aides were reluctant to divulge the number of amendments Senators are prepared to file. But given that reconciliation rules prevent Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) from limiting amendments to such a bill, the GOP is looking to upend the Democrats’ health care agenda by proposing an unspecified number of changes.

"There is a healthy batch of amendments that were excluded from the health care debate that will serve as a down payment," a senior Republican Senate aide said Monday. "But it is safe to say our Conference has plenty of other ideas that are being put to paper."

Ideas that they hope will make Dems have to take a whole lot of politically difficult votes. Which is precisely why the House doesn't trust the Senate, and has to go to the lengths of things like self-executing rules. If nothing else, this prolonged debate has shown just how deeply broken our system is, that it can be hijacked by a bunch of nihilists who want nothing to do with governing.

Of course, if Obama and every other Democrat with a microphone pointed out that this is what the modern Republican party has become--a bunch of bomb-throwers who think government is the problem--instead of persisting in the delusion that they the loyal opposition who need to be reached out to and who have ideas worthy of consideration, it might be easier to govern around them.

WaPo:

House may try to pass Senate health-care bill without voting on it

The Hill:

Dems move closer to passing Senate bill without actual vote

These two headlines are going to be difficult to explain when the House holds its vote. How do they plan on reconciling the fact that they're reporting on an actual vote, expected to take place later this week, when they've already reported that there won't be one?

The answer, of course, is that there will be a vote, and the headlines are misleading and inflammatory.

Meanwhile, confusion (willful and otherwise) fans the flames of panic on both the left and the right, the right insisting that self-executing rules (not counting the 200+ Republicans used) are, "the greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War. It would be 100 times worse than Watergate," and the left worrying that the procedure creates constitutional problems.

But both sides make a single fundamental error, which I'll illustrate with Jack Balkin's example, that leads to all the rest:

Ezra Klein reports that Speaker Nancy Pelosi hopes to avoid asking House Democrats to vote directly on the Senate health care reform bill; instead, she will incorporate the bill by reference in the House reconciliation bill, which will then be sent to the Senate [....]

Whether or not it provides plausible deniability, is it consistent with the Constitution? Stanford Law Professor (and former judge) Michael McConnell doesn't think so. The argument is simple: To satisfy Article I, section 7's requirement of bicameralism and presentment, both houses must pass the same bill for the President to sign. If they pass different bills, no law is created, even if the President signs both.

The first flawed premise in Balkin's opening is that he believes the Senate health care reform bill will be incorporated by reference in the House reconciliation bill. It will not. Instead, the rule governing consideration of the reconciliation bill will incorporate a motion to agree to the Senate bill (actually a Senate-amended House bill). Agreeing to such a motion is perfectly routine and perfectly legitimate. The House will be presented with the opportunity to vote up or down on a measure incorporating that motion, and by adopting it will in turn adopt a procedure for agreeing to exactly the same text as the Senate passed, which will be triggered by the House's recording of a vote in favor of passage of the reconciliation bill. At no point does the House amend or otherwise alter the text of H.R. 3590 as amended by the Senate. The requirements of the Constitution are satisfied.

Mark Levin, complaining from the right, asks incredulously:

They're going to present a rule issued by [Rep. Louise Slaughter's] committee, with her as chairman, that says that the House already adopted the Senate bill, when we know it didn't?

He'd be right to be incredulous if his premise were correct. It isn't. The rule will not say that the House already adopted the Senate bill. It will say that the House, by adoption of the rule, agrees that it will manifest its assent to the Senate bill with its vote on reconciliation bill.

Can it do that? Yes it can. The House, under its constitutional prerogative stemming from Art. I, Sec. 5, determines its own rules of proceeding. All the Constitution requires of it is that approval of bills be signaled by a recording of the yeas and nays in its Journal, and that the same text be agreed to by both houses of Congress. By agreement under the rule, the House will indeed signal its agreement by the yeas and nays to the language of the Senate bill, but it will do so with its vote on the reconciliation bill.

But isn't that odd? A bit. Could the House signal its agreement to the Senate bill with its vote on a bill establishing National Unicorn Day? Yes it could, so long as the procedure is agreed to by a majority of the House beforehand,  the yeas and nays are recorded on the Journal, and the text of the Senate bill itself remains unchanged in the action.

And that's exactly what happens here.

It's no different in that sense than when the Senate agrees by unanimous consent to a House-passed bill. Or when the House takes up a motion to agree to the Senate version of a bill, as opposed to bringing the bill itself to the floor and voting on that. The House determines for itself, through its own rules, whether it will accept a Senate bill by calling it to the floor and voting on it directly, or instead by agreeing to a motion to agree to the Senate version. In one case, the vote is on a pending bill. In the other, the vote is on a procedural motion. But either will do, thanks to Art. I, Sec. 5, and the idea that that would suddenly be constitutionally suspect endangers probably 50% or more of the entire body of federal law.

To Balkin's credit, he proposes later in the piece a method by which "deeming" the Senate bill passed would be acceptable:

Despite Judge McConnell's concerns, which are textually well founded, there is a way that "deem and pass" could be done constitutionally. There have to be two separate bills signed by the President: the first one is the original Senate bill, and the second one is the reconciliation bill. The House must pass the Senate bill and it must also pass the reconciliation bill. The House may do this on a single vote if the special rule that accompanies the reconciliation bill says that by passing the reconciliation bill the House agrees to pass the same text of the same bill that the Senate has passed. That is to say, the language of the special rule that accompanies the reconciliation bill must make the House take political responsibility for passing the same language as the Senate bill. The House must say that the House has consented to accept the text of the Senate bill as its own political act. At that point the President can sign the two bills, and it does not matter that the House has passed both through a special rule.

The luckiest part of this whole thing? That's exactly what the plan actually is:

Option 3: Place self-executing language in the rule for the reconciliation bill that deems the Senate amendments agreed to upon passage of the actual reconciliation bill in the House.

[...]

The Speaker took care to say that nothing's been finalized in terms of this decision, but her preference is clearly for #3.

Freak out over. You may resume your normal level of confusion. But there will be a vote, and the dopes who have run headlines saying there won't be would have some explaining to do when the vote is held and they report it. Except that no one will demand that of them, because ... uh...

From the you-can't-make-this-stuff-up files:

A New Jersey appeals court is allowing a conservative tea party group to proceed with an effort to throw a Democratic U.S. senator out of office.

The three-judge panel Tuesday ordered the secretary of state to accept the group's petition seeking to recall Sen. Robert Menendez. That allows the tea party activists to begin collecting the 1.3 million voter signatures they need to get a recall on the ballot.

The court said they'll cross any Constitutional bridges if the petition drive is successful.

Update:
The court's opinion is here.  The Court stated that It was "disinclined to allow the process to go forward, and the citizens of this State to believe they are participating in a recall process, if it is certain that the court would have to decide, shortly thereafter, that the process was manifestly unconstitutional," but that contrary to what you might have believed it wasn't completely certain that a recall of a United States Senator would be unconstitutional.  You'll see the Court's analysis of this on pages 20-27 of the opinion, focusing on language from the 1995 term limits case that "'the people should choose whom they please to govern them" and that "this case deals with neither the qualifications clause nor with handicapping the electorate or its choice; even a recalled Senator could run for reelection." The Court summarized as follows:

In sum, there are a host of genuine arguments and counterarguments that can be articulated and debated about whether or not the Federal Constitution would permit a United States Senator to be recalled by the voters under state law. There is no express textual answer to this debate in the United States Constitution. Nor is there any precedent from the United States Supreme Court squarely on point. The briefs and arguments in this appeal do not convince us that we can safely predict what the United States Supreme Court would do if it were presented with the issue. Although many commentators have suggested that such recall measures are, in fact, invalid, such analyses involve debate about the true meaning and intent of the Framers.

Against this backdrop of uncertainty about the preemptive contours of the Federal Constitution, we must also consider the fundamental significance of our State's own constitutional charter, and the overwhelming majority of voters who approved the recall measure in 1993. We live in a State that has a rich tradition, particularly since our modern State Constitution was adopted in 1947, of recognizing individual rights that often go beyond the bare minimums conferred by the Federal Constitution. Time and time again, our courts have identified and enforced rights of the people of our State that emanate from our own constitution and that are not embodied, or guaranteed to the same degree, in the United States Constitution. ... Typically, such issues have arisen in the contexts where the New Jersey Constitution confers greater protection than cognate rights in the Federal Constitution, rather than a case such as this one involving structural provisions of the respective Constitutions. Even so, we do not treat lightly defendants' request that we declare the words of our State Constitution to be irreconcilably in conflict with federal law, and absent clear precedent that compels such a declaration, we are loathe to strike down a component of our State's charter that fortifies the democratic role of our citizens. In short, our State Constitution, and the democratic process that produced it, deserves our utmost respect unless federal law clearly and definitively trumps it.

Given the will of the people embodied in our State organic law, and the dearth of clear precedent nullifying the people's enactments, we accordingly decline at this juncture to find our State constitutional provision and related statute permitting recall of a United States Senator to be unconstitutional. We, as an intermediate appellate court, like the Secretary of State, are sworn to uphold the State Constitution as well the federal, and we have a duty to endeavor to reconcile the provisions of the Constitutions so long as we also recognize the Supreme Law of the Land.

Essentially, the Court decided that the question wasn't so clear as to allow the Secretary of State to not even accept the signatures, should they be so gathered.  Urging the need for judicial restraint, the Court concluded: "There is, and there will be, no necessity for our courts to resolve this difficult constitutional issue if the Committee's petition drive fails to collect the necessary, approximately, 1,300,000 signatures. Pending that possible eventuality, we see no urgent reason to now decide the question of invalidity or validity with finality. All we need to decide, as we have done, is whether there is a sufficient basis for the Committee to proceed with its initiative and for the Secretary of State to perform her ministerial function." -- Adam B

Oh, this is rich. Karl Rove on the current U.S.-Israel kerfuffle:

“I think this is part of a broader problem with the Obama administration, and that is there doesn’t seem to be enough groundwork done before these international meetings that they don’t get caught by surprises like this,” Rove said on ABC’s “Top Line.”

Yes, this from the "brain" of the administration that brought you the oh-so-well-planned Iraq war.

In the same interview, he criticizes the Honduran leader for--hang on to your hat--being a "cowboy president" who violates the Constitution. And somehow this is Obama's fault.

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.

Comedy:

Republicans are threatening to make life difficult for Democrats if they try to push health care reform through the Senate using the budget reconciliation process.

That's probably the funniest thing you'll read all day. Until, that is, you read Joe Lieberman's deep thought on the subject:

It will make it a partisan and less productive place than it’s been, I’m afraid.

The polls say health care reform is wildly unpopular, right?

Well...not exactly. It's true that according to Rasmussen health care reform is wildly unpopular:

But every other poll tells a different story -- that health care reform is steadily gaining support as the end game approaches:

You can track the numbers for yourself at pollster.com.

Writing in The Hill, Jordan Fabian catches an interesting reaction to Jim DeMint's admission that he's "less confident" than he once was about the GOP's ability to stop health care reform.

Even though DeMint said he was "less confident" a Republican aide appeared unfazed.

"Yet another helpful attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory," was how he described the quote.

Once health care reform passes, we're going to see a lot more of this kind of bitter sniping.

In today's special election in New York's SD-13, José Peralta is set to replace disgraced and ousted abuser Hiram Monserrate ... and Peralta's opponent in the race is none other than Hiram Monserrate.

Yes, barely a month after he was expelled from the New York State Senate after his conviction for assaulting his girlfriend, the domestic abusing, homophopic, party traitor is trying to regain his old seat by touting his opposition to same-sex marriage. Because who better to uphold the sanctity of marriage than the man who slashed his live-in girlfriend's face with broken glass?

The special election is today, so if you live in New York's SD-13, get out and vote for José Peralta.

And whether you live in SD-13, in New York state, or if you just don't want to see a man like Hiram Monserrate holding power over other people's lives, volunteer today to help get out the vote.

In the House, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader:

FLOOR SCHEDULE FOR TUESDAY, MARCH 16, 2010

House Meets At... 10:30 a.m.: Morning Hour
12:00 p.m.: Legislative Business
First Vote Predicted... 2:00 – 3:00 p.m.
Last Vote Predicted... 5:30 – 6:30 p.m.

"One Minutes"

Suspensions (12 Bills):

1. H.Res. 311 - Expressing the support of the House of Representatives for the goals and ideals of Red Cross Month (Rep. Watson - Foreign Affairs)
2. H.Res. 605 - Recognizing the continued persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China on the 10th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party campaign to suppress the Falun Gong spiritual movement and calling for an immediate end to the campaign to persecute, intimidate, imprison, and torture Falun Gong practitioners (Rep. Ros-Lehtinen - Foreign Affairs)
3. H.Res. 1128 - Thanking Vancouver for hosting the world during the 2010 Winter Olympics and honoring the athletes from Team USA (Rep. Davis (CA) - Foreign Affairs)
4. H.R. 4252 - Inland Empire Perchlorate Ground Water Plume Assessment Act of 2009 (Rep. Baca - Natural Resources)
5. H.R. 2788 - Distinguished Flying Cross National Memorial Act (Rep. Calvert - Natural Resources)
6. H.R. 4003 - Hudson River Valley Special Resource Study Act (Rep. Hinchey - Natural Resources)
7. H.R. 3671 - Upper Mississippi River Basin Protection Act (Rep. Kind - Natural Resources)
8. H.R. 1769 - Alpine Lakes Wilderness Additions and Pratt and Middle Fork Snoqualmie Rivers Protection Act (Rep. Reichert - Natural Resources)
9. H.R. 4395 - To revise the boundaries of the Gettysburg National Military Park to include the Gettysburg Train Station (Rep. Platts - Natural Resources)
10. H.Res. 1089 - Recognizing the 150th anniversary of Augustana College (Rep. Hare - Education and Labor)
11. H.Res. 1167 - Expressing the support of the House of Representatives for the goals and ideals of Professional Social Work Month and World Social Work Day (Rep. Shea-Porter - Education and Labor)
12. H.Res. __ - Congratulating the 2009-2010 University of Maryland Men's Basketball Team on an outstanding season (Rep. Hoyer - Education and Labor)

Postponed Suspension Vote (1 Bill):

1. H.R. 4628 - To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 216 Westwood Avenue in Westwood, New Jersey, as the "Sergeant Christopher R. Hrbek Post Office Building" (Rep. Garrett - Oversight and Government Reform)

• Conference Reports may be brought up at any time.
• Motions to go to Conference should they become available.
• Possible Motions to Instruct Conferees.

In the Senate, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader:

Convenes 10:15am

Morning business until 12:30pm with the time until 10:30am equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees. Further, the time from 10:30am until 12:30pm will be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each, with the Majority controlling the first half and the Republicans controlling the final half.

The Senate will stand in recess from 12:30pm-2:15pm to allow for the weekly caucus meetings.

At 2:15pm, the Senate will resume consideration of H.R.1586, the vehicle for the FAA reauthorization bill. Roll call votes in relation to the FAA bill are possible Tuesday afternoon.

Once again, all the action is off the floor today. The House considers another raft of suspensions (today's crop comes courtesy of the Foreign Affairs, Natural Resources, and Education & Labor Committees), while the Senate kinda-sorta (in its way) considers FAA reauthorization.

Off the floor, it's vote counting on health insurance reform, which is headed for its next step toward passage: a stop in the House Rules Committee later this week, where the reconciliation measure will take its final shape before heading to the House floor. Expect Republicans to spend their day claiming the process is unconstitutional, but also curiously unstoppable.

Meanwhile, in the committee rooms, it's more budget mania. Today's full committee schedule appears below.

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

Going once...Going twice...

The wild auctionbeast stalks his prey with stealth and cunning. Hiding between the sofa cushions to avoid detection, his nostrils suddenly flare as he picks up the scent of a fellow predator bidding on the same item in the Spring Netroots Nation Auction. He quietly deletes the "You've Been Outbid" email notice from his in-box and licks his chops.

Knowing that his competition is still lurking nearby, the auctionbeast fights the temptation to email the bastard and whine about how he really, really wants the item and please stop outbidding me him. Instead, he extends his hand ever so slowly from between the sofa cushions to his laptop and, his Taylor Lautner-like index-finger muscles now taut and tense, strikes his keypad with equal parts cool-headedness and bloodlust...

My Maximum Bid: $3

[Click]

Bid confirmed!

And now there's little else to do but watch as the auctionbeast's prey struggles, gasps for air, and eventually succumbs to the forces of free-market capitali...

[Ding!]

To: Bill in Portland
Fr: From Netroots Nation Auction Headquarters
Re: Auction status

You have been outbid again.

"Sonuvabitch!!!"

[sigh]

The wild auctionbeast re-stalks his prey with stealth and cunning. Hiding between the sofa cushions to avoid detection, his nostrils suddenly flare as he picks up the scent of a fellow predator.....

Auction ends at 10 tonight.  Happy hunting.

Update: The site seems to be temporarily down. I'll go whack it with a hammer and let you know if that works.  It worked!  The site is back up.

Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Your one stop pundit shop.

Roger Cohen says that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s apology is not enough:

The announcement that another 1,600 apartments for Jews will be built in east Jerusalem, a pure provocation when restarting peace talks is the core U.S. aim.  [...]

This is a watershed moment. Palestinian violence, Palestinian anti-Semitic incitement and jihadist infiltration of the Palestinian national movement all undermine peace efforts. They are unacceptable; Biden was right to “ironclad” the U.S. commitment to Israeli security. But it’s past time that Palestinian failings cease to serve as an excuse for Israel’s remorseless, cynical scattering of the Palestinian people into enclaves that make a farce of statehood. That is “an affront” to America.

In this sense, Biden’s foray has been salutary. It brought U.S. “vital interests” to the surface. It challenged Israel’s ostrich-like burrowing into polices that, over time, will make one divided, undemocratic state more likely than “two states for two peoples.” It asked again the question posed recently by David Shulman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: Are Israelis, cocooned, still able “to see, to imagine, and to acknowledge the suffering of other human beings, including those aspects of their suffering for which we are directly responsible?”

Bob Herbert believes that Toyota is treating California with "the foulest form of ingratitude."

David Brooks is an idiot:

Reconciliation has been used with increasing frequency. That was bad enough. But at least for the Bush tax cuts or the prescription drug bill, there was significant bipartisan support. Now we have pure reconciliation mixed with pure partisanship.

Once partisan reconciliation is used for this bill, it will be used for everything, now and forever. The Senate will be the House. The remnants of person-to-person relationships, with their sympathy and sentiment, will be snuffed out. We will live amid the relationships of group versus group, party versus party, inhumanity versus inhumanity.

First, there was not always "significant bipartisan support" when reconciliation was used in the past ... but why let 30 seconds on Google get in the way of an agenda? Second, what planet has Brooks been living on for the past 14 months? And finally, we don't send senators to Washington to make friends, we send them to do their job. Senate Republicans do not want to do their job. Or make friends, for that matter.

Marc Thiessen, fresh off of his disgraceful defense of Liz Cheney's attacks against Justice Department lawyers, today plays concern troll on health care reform. A troll who doesn't bother to follow the news on health care reform.

Eugene Robinson is appalled that the Obama administration will allow the resale of 100,000 contaminated, Katrina-era, FEMA trailers.

Lawrence Harmon points out that:

The traditional 18- to 22-year-old residing on campus is no longer the norm. Almost three-quarters of undergraduates fall into the “nontraditional’’ category, according to a 2002 National Center for Education Statistics report, meaning they work full time, are financially independent, attend college part time, or didn’t go directly from high school to higher education. For these nontraditional college students, a foreign adventure abroad is more likely to mean deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan than exploring the medieval Gothic quarter in Barcelona. College isn’t just for children anymore.

Derrick Z. Jackson wants to talk about more than brackets:

EARLY THIS basketball season, when the National Collegiate Athletic Association released its 2009 Division 1 Graduation Success Rate report, interim president Jim Isch boasted how the overall graduation rate for basketball was up nearly 10 percentage points over the last eight years. “Be assured, the NCAA’s commitment to academics is as strong as it has ever been,’’ Isch said.

Walter Harrison, president of the University of Hartford and chairman of the NCAA’s academic performance committee, added, “At the ground level of academic reform on our campuses, there has been monumental change.’’

There is no assurance of monumental change until the NCAA finally grounds its worst programs. However, there is no sign of that as top-power Kentucky made the Division 1 tournament with a Graduation Success Rate of only 18 percent for its black athletes and 31 percent overall.  [...]

The NCAA says 56 percent of black basketball players now graduate from Division 1 teams, continuing a slow increase. White players have an 81 percent graduation rate. There is plenty of praise to go around among the 65 teams that made this year’s tournament. Top-tier seeds Kansas, Duke, Villanova, Pittsburgh, and Georgetown have black player graduation rates between 67 and 100 percent. Marquette, Wofford, Brigham Young, Wake Forest, Utah State, and Notre Dame had a 100 percent graduation rate across the board.

But until the NCAA bans the likes of Maryland, Texas, Nevada Las Vegas, and Kentucky, the concept of “student-athlete’’ is corrupted beyond repair. At these schools, the athletes are semipros who should be paid.

At Harper's magazine, Scott Horton writes:

Neoconservative legal scholars and their allies argue aggressively that international law isn’t really law because the nations who make it–through treaties and conventions and by practice–don’t really treat it as law. But Michael Scharf and Paul Williams, two alumni of the Legal Adviser’s office in the State Department–known inside the Beltway as "L"–decided to take a deep look inside the process of policy decision making to test this theory. They convened the ten living legal advisers in meetings in Washington and later also gathered some of their equals from Russia, China, and the United Kingdom, and asked them to address the question directly. Did their governments in fact treat international law as law in making decisions? Working through crises including Vietnam, Watergate, and Iran-Contra, they found that international law did in fact directly shape executive decisions. I put six questions to Case Western Reserve University Law Professor Michael Scharf about his new book, Shaping Foreign Policy in Times of Crisis. ...

1. Can you cite any specific cases in which a president has been advised not to take a contemplated action because of international law and he followed that advice?

The ten former State Department Legal Advisers provided a number of examples spanning thirty years. Examples detailed in the book include President Carter’s 1979 decision not to use force against the Iranian Embassy in Washington during the hostage crisis, President Reagan’s 1985 decision not to authorize the shooting down of an Egyptian airliner carrying the terrorists responsible for the Achile Lauro cruise-ship hijacking, President Clinton’s 1994 decision to halt the supply of counter-narcotics intelligence to the Peruvian air force after it shot down a civilian aircraft, and President Bush’s decision to direct the State of Texas not to execute a Mexican national convicted of rape and murder in order to comply with an International Court of Justice order. The legal advisers said there were only four times during the past thirty years in which they were intentionally cut out of the decision-making process on issues involving the interpretation or application of international law, and they described each as a "train wreck." The first was the mining of the Nicaragua harbor, the second was the Iran-Contra affair, the third was the kidnapping of Mexican doctor Humberto Álvarez Machaín, and the fourth was the drafting of the so-called "torture memos."

• • • • •

At Daily Kos on this date in 2006:

Viewers of MSNBC's Hardball were treated to a rare episode last night. The program was devoted to reviewing the deeply flawed assumptions and promises from the WH concerning every aspect of the Iraq War, President Bush's abysmal poll numbers, and the looming loss of GOP seats in the coming mid-terms as a result. But forty minutes in, host Chris Matthews suddenly made an abortive detour into fantasy-land, trying to portray the insurmountable problems the Republican cluster-fuck in Iraq poses for the Democrats. How ever will the Democrats survive this relentless plague of record popularity?

Tonight's Rescue is brought to you by Louisiana 1976, aloha_and_mahalo, HoosierDeb, grog, Alfonso Nevarez, and dadanation, with vcmvo2 editing.

• The gorgeous pictures matching mole shares with us in his Biodiversity Adventures I: Southern Florida Photodiary are a glimpse of a paradise which is in peril from climate change. (Louisiana 1976)
• Given the tone and tenor of the language used to deride President Obama, gjohnsit carefully explains just how deliberate and wrong this framing is when writing Words Mean Things: Fascism. (dadanation)
• Mayfly delivers the eulogy for an Irish friend, and in such a way that you'd think you were down' the Pub with her, clinking glasses and enjoying A tribute on St. Patrick's Day. (aloha and mahalo)
• If you haven't heard of Henrietta Lacks, jimstaro explains why you should in Making Billions{?} on Health, Yet Sources Of Not Compensated! (dadanation)
• In a thought-provoking essay,hepshiba offers some Reflections on Right Wing Rhetoric #1: The Talismanic Word. (Louisiana 1976)
• jellyyork looks at ongoing studies about the irrational voting behavior resulting from conservative moral framing in Democracy at Risk--What's Really Driving the Wingnuts. (grog)
• Less than 5% Unemployment? RenaRF argues that, in the absence of irresponsible personal borrowing, such a high rate of employment will never again be possible, unless we get serious about revitalizing American manufacturing. (Alfonso Nevarez)
• Muskegon Critic can barely contain his excitement over an impending step forward in creating new, green jobs - part of which includes a Major Wind Developer Giving Presentation to...our Facebook Group. (HoosierDeb)

jotter has High Impact Diaries: March 14, 2010.

virgomusic brings Top Comments - Choral Marathon Edition.

Enjoy and please join us by suggesting your own favorite diaries from the past twenty-four hours in this Open Thread!

Beware the Ides of March! And, while you are doing that, take the time to read the Wrap, which actually (and mercifully, from where I sit and type) ducks back under the 10,000 word limit for the first time in weeks....

THE U.S. SENATE

CA-Sen: Right-Wing Groups Start Crusade to Crush GOP Frontrunner
From the moment he switched from a prospective gubernatorial race to a bid for the U.S. Senate, Tom Campbell has moved to the front of the polls. Clearly, this has the far-right a bit concerned (Campbell has a reputation as a moderate, particularly on social issues). One of their numbers, the folks at NOM (National Organization of Marriage), is taking to the air in order to paint Campbell as insufficiently conservative on the issue of gay marriage.

CO-Sen: PPP Finds Reasonably Open Primaries on Both Sides of Aisle
Both incumbent Democratic Senator Michael Bennet and presumed GOP frontrunner Jane Norton have to be at least a bit concerned about their primaries, if new numbers from PPP are to be believed. Bennet, on the Democratic side, leads former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff by six points (40-34), according to the poll. Meanwhile, Jane Norton clocks in at a thoroughly unimpressive 34%. Her lead over Ken Buck is seventeen points, as he sits at 17%. Buck, however, is somewhat closer to Norton among conservatives, trailing 34-21. They also poll the GOP gubernatorial primary, but the result is so insignificant it does not merit its own spot in the Wrap: Scott McInnis leads 58-8.

NC-Sen: Marshall Poll Shows Big Primary Lead, But High Undecideds
There is something for everyone in a slightly dusty (mid-February) internal poll for Democratic Senate candidate Elaine Marshall, which was recently released by Team Marshall. Marshall's poll shows her with a twenty-six point lead, with 31% of the vote versus 5% for former state legislator Cal Cunningham and 4% for attorney Ken Lewis. Team Marshall will undoubtedly tell you that this means that they have a commanding lead, and neither of their rivals have managed to launch. Ask Team Cunningham and Team Lewis, and they will almost certainly tell you that even in Marshall's own internals, she is not close to sniffing 50% of the vote, despite being a statewide officeholder. Both of these hypothetical analyses are, of course, correct.

PA-Sen: Sometime-GOP Pollster Has Toomey Leading Specter
Here is kind of a peculiar counterweight to the spate of recent polls (by Research 2000 and Quinnipiac) showing Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter leading likely GOP nominee Patrick Toomey. A new poll from Susquehanna Research, a pollster that has worked both for media outlets and GOP candidates in the past, gives Toomey a six point edge (42-36) over Arlen Specter. Interestingly, they did not release a trial heat for a potential Sestak-Toomey showdown.

THE U.S. HOUSE

KY-03: Yarmuth Has 4-Point Edge Among Committed Voters, Says SUSA
Here is a rather strange poll, but one worth reporting, as it concerns a member of the Democratic class of 2006. SurveyUSA, who has been unusually quiet this election season, comes out of hiding to poll the Louisville Mayoral race, and tosses in a strangely-worded question about the electoral viability of John Yarmuth, who has represented KY-03 since 2007. 27% of voters will vote for Yarmuth no matter what, while 23% of voters will vote against him, no matter what. Most, perhaps not surprisingly, are waiting to see who the GOP candidate is. A quintet of Republicans, although arguably none of them are "first-tier" candidates, are vying for the nod.

PA-07: Could Cleared GOP Field Actually Be Blessing in Disguise?
Most folks, myself included, figured that Patrick Meehan, the likely GOP nominee in the open-seat race in the Pennsylvania 7th, caught a break when former TV news anchor Dawn Stensland decided not to make a bid for the GOP nomination. As it turns out, Stensland might have only ruled out a Republican bid for Congress. According to the Philadelphia Daily News, Stensland has not ruled out an Independent bid for Congress. Stensland, who would bring name recognition into the contest, could cause a mountain of troubles for Meehan were she to run to his right (hat tip: DC's Political Report).

THE GUBERNATORIAL RACES

MI-Gov: Bernero Locks Down AFL-CIO Endorsement
It is hard not to consider Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero the Democratic frontrunner after the news that the AFL-CIO had decided to endorse his candidacy. He had already locked down the UAW. Bernero's leading Democratic challenger is state House Speaker Andy Dillon. The GOP has a multicandidate field, although it seems as if Congressman Peter Hoekstra has moved into the front of that field.

NM-Gov: Is Another Presumptive GOP Frontrunner In Deep Trouble?
Another day, another supposed top-tier Republican candidate looking at the painful prospect of political elimination within his own party. In something of a surprise, Pete Domenici Jr. finished way back in the pack at the state's GOP Convention this weekend. Not only did Domenici falter badly in finishing dead last among the five candidates, he logged a pathetic 4.6% of the vote. His team is dismissing it as a meaningless straw poll, but it has a practical impact--because Domenici scored less than 20% of the convention vote, he must gain twice as many signatures to qualify for the ballot than the two candidates who met that standard--Allan Weh and Susana Martinez.

PA-Gov: Susquehanna Poll--Corbett Leads By Double Digits
The same Susquehanna poll that had Specter trailing Toomey on the Senate side also, perhaps not surprisingly, has the presumed GOP nominee up big on the gubernatorial side. Most polls, to be fair, have Republican state AG Tom Corbett leading his Democratic challengers. Susquehanna, however, has the margins a touch wider, with Corbett up 37-26 over Democratic state Auditor Jack Wagner, and up fifteen (39-24) on Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato.

Via TWI, House Republicans say they can't block the House procedurally in their plan to pass the reconciliation bill with a self-executing provision considering the Senate bill "deemed" as passed.

House Republicans say they cannot block a Democratic maneuver that would allow Members to avoid a separate vote on the Senate health care bill.

“There is nothing that can prevent it,” said Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), the ranking member of the Rules Committee. “It’s something they can clearly do if they have the votes."

Of course, that's not preventing Dreier from attacking it.

Dreier ripped the plan as “trying to avoid the accountability of an up-or-down vote” and said it violated Pelosi’s pledge of an open and transparent Congress. “It pains me to see,” he said.

You know what's coming next, right?

When Republicans were in the minority, they railed against self-executing rules as being anti-deliberative because they undermined and perverted the work of committees and also prevented the House from having a separate debate and vote on the majority's preferred changes....

When Republicans took power in 1995, they soon lost their aversion to self-executing rules and proceeded to set new records under Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). There were 38 and 52 self-executing rules in the 104th and 105th Congresses (1995-1998), making up 25 percent and 35 percent of all rules, respectively. Under Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) there were 40, 42 and 30 self-executing rules in the 106th, 107th and 108th Congresses (22 percent, 37 percent and 22 percent, respectively). Thus far in the 109th Congress, self-executing rules make up about 16 percent of all rules.

On April 26, [2006] the Rules Committee served up the mother of all self-executing rules for the lobby/ethics reform bill. The committee hit the trifecta with not one, not two, but three self-executing provisions in the same special rule. The first trigger was a double whammy: “In lieu of the amendments recommended by the Committees on the Judiciary, Rules, and Government Reform now printed in the bill, the amendment in the nature of a substitute consisting of the text of the Rules Committee Print dated April 21, 2006, modified by the amendment printed in part A of the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution, shall be considered as adopted in the House and the Committee of the Whole.”

And which Republican was chairing the Rules Committee in April, 2006? Why, David Dreier, of course.

What an asshole:

In an amendment presented on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Steve Russell, R-Oklahoma City, gutted a bill that had been filed to create a task force to study the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association, and inserted language to make changes to the state's hate crime statutes.

Under the new provisions of Senate Bill 1965, reports that were collected during investigations of possible hate crime that did not end in a conviction would be destroyed or kept by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.

What does that mean? It means that Sen. Russell wants to make sure the big, bad federal government can't come barging into Oklahoma to investigate hate crimes. And lest you think Sen. Russell is an anomaly, he's not. The measure passed by a vote of 39-6 and now heads to the House.

And why do Sen. Russell and pals want to protect Oklahoma from the big, bad federal government?

Russell said because the government has decided to intervene on issues of morality, he is worried that religious leaders who speak out against any lifestyle could be imprisoned for their speech. "The law is very vague to begin with," Russell said. "Sexual orientation is a very vague word that could be extended to extremes like necrophilia."

Um, Steve? First of all, "sexual orientation" is two words. And second, you're an asshole.

When asked about whether the state of Oklahoma should reject the $5 million in federal funds that the federal government would give to law enforcement agencies to help prosecute hate crimes, Russell said he thought about finding a way to pass his law while taking the money, but said it would be a compromise in the values of his bill.

Of course. Because Sen. Russell wants the big, bad federal government to stay the hell out of Oklahoma so that Oklahomans can commit hate crimes against gay people without fear of retribution. But he still wants the big, bad government to hand out the big bucks.

The bird who has eaten cannot fly with the bird that is hungry. --attributed to the Omaha

It can be said, alternately, that the hungry bird cannot fly as far or hunt as successfully as the bird who has already been fed.

The larger picture

When it comes to internet broadband connectivity, much of the United States is still a hungry bird. The United States has fallen far behind globally in terms of the number of households who access the internet via broadband. At the start of the Bush administration, the US ranked fourth in broadband access and adoption in households and businesses across the country. As of 2009, US broadband connectivity is now ranked somewhere around 13th to 15th, according to a report published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Another source, Strategy Analytics, estimated broadband at the household level in the US as twentieth in 2008, well behind Scandinavian countries, several Asian nations, and the UK. The company projects that the US will fall to 23rd once figures for 2009 are reported.

There are a multitude of reasons why this country lags behind in broadband and fiber optics development; the reasons are the usual suspects – economic obstacles, policy conflicts, and existing infrastructure. There’s also the ongoing dialogue of whether broadband should be extended only through private industry development or with government funding as an open-access utility, like electricity or water, or a hybrid of financing through both public and private.

For the record, the US is one of the few “developed” countries in the world, and the only industrialized nation, that has yet to adopt a national broadband policy.

The United States is currently the only industrialized nation without a national policy for Internet access. Estonia, Greece, France and Finland have recognized Internet access as a basic human right in accordance with the United Nations recommendation. TechNewsDaily: U.S. Considers 'Internet Access for All'

A potentially huge sea change in national broadband policy is being presented to Congress on Tuesday, March 16th. Courtesy of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the FCC will introduce a National Broadband Plan that charts a $25 billion course over the next ten years for greater rural broadband access and increased wireless for police and fire departments.

Additionally, the Plan includes improved initiatives for broadband access for Native American reservations in regions where there is currently little to no broadband or even DSL access via telecommunication landlines.

The micro picture

These new initiatives in the upcoming National Plan are intended to build upon the first FCC Indian Telecom Initiatives established in 2002. Seven years from that first Initiative, broadband adoption rate on Native American reservations is estimated somewhere between a lowly 5% to 10%.

Here are the starved birds.

There are more than 300 tribal reservations in the Continental United States; in addition, there is one tribal reservation, along with several tribal townships and villages in Alaska.

Many of these reservations float like uncharted islands in the middle of a remote ocean when it comes to 20th and 21st century technologies. The services and the infrastructure, and more to the point, the profit margin for potential corporate and business investment, do not exist. Often, the available satellite and DSL/T1 services that are offered on some reservations are prohibitively expensive (in some areas twice to three times the average urban monthly cable bill). The download and capacity speeds are much slower and less efficient.

There is no tax base for any kind of local or state municipal bond development or levy proposal to establish underlying physical infrastructure, which can complicate seeking grants for matching federal funds. There is little political will on the part of most state level policy makers to work with tribes towards improving access to technology. Not enough voters? Not enough money.

The upper Midwest and Great Plains reservations provide examples where the topography and extensive distances from main broadband hubs and urban areas complicate affordable broadband adoption. Extending phone lines, basic cable lines, fiber-optic cable – even electric service in some areas - to a comparatively small population is rarely financially feasible for private industry providers, large or small. In addition, to bridge connectivity, many reservations must partner effectively with adjacent communities outside the reservations to obtain continuous access to broadband resources and to improve total cost of installation and maintenance.

Such isolation from access to technology impedes every element of an already difficult life on reservations rife with poverty, unemployment, and a tragically underserved and undereducated youth population.

In an address to the National Congress of American Indians in Washington D.C. on March 2,  FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski discussed the need for this access far better than I can paraphrase.

High-speed Internet is not only the Web and
email; it’s a telephone; it’s television; it’s a library; it’s a town hall.

Broadband has the potential to help Tribal communities advance farther, faster, than any new technology in our lifetime.

Broadband is a platform for job creation and economic growth.
Studies from the Brookings Institute, MIT, the World Bank, and others all tell us the same thing -- that even modest increases in broadband adoption nationally can yield hundreds of thousands of new jobs, and broadband can generate jobs in Indian Country.

Broadband is a platform for innovation. If you have a high-speed Internet connection, you can dream big, bring those dreams to life, and then bring them to the world.

Broadband also is a platform for solutions to so many of our major challenges: education, health care, energy, public safety, and democratic engagement.

Broadband’s ability to transcend the barriers of distance could be particularly potent for Tribal communities.

With broadband, entrepreneurs on Tribal lands don’t need to move to the cities. They can collaborate, innovate, and create new small businesses and high-value jobs because they have access to robust and open information networks.

With broadband, kids in Tribal schools can have access in their classrooms to the best teachers in the world, and access in their homes to up-to-date e-textbooks and high quality tutoring from energized college and grad students around America.

With broadband, a Native American with diabetes can get dietary counseling on her home computer, a remote diagnosis in a nearby facility, and, if necessary, even surgery aided remotely by specialists at teaching hospitals.

As Genachowski states, there are obstacles in broadening the reach of even basic technology on many remote reservations.

One of the main statistics I often cite when talking about the need for a National Broadband Plan is that ONLY 65 percent of Americans have broadband in the home.

In Indian Country, 65 percent is roughly the adoption rate for TELEPHONE service. That’s unacceptable.

The high unemployment, extreme poverty, and alarming mental and physical health conditions on many reservations, such as the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, are amplified not only by lack of access, but by the ability to pay for it.  The Chairman, to his credit, doesn’t avoid addressing this economic divide.

Where broadband is available, in general we’ve found that a major barrier to broadband adoption is affordability. With crippling poverty on Tribal lands, that’s going to be an even bigger obstacle in Indian Country.

Put simply, bringing faster, affordable broadband service to people in Monument Valley is a lot harder than bringing it to people in Silicon Valley. I get that.

Not surprisingly, there are echoes of the New Deal in the debate over increasing broadband access in both rural areas and on reservations through government funding as part of our nation’s crucial infrastructure improvement.

The dispute over municipal broadband bears a striking similarity to the development of the electric power industry a century ago. As James Baller—an attorney who represents local governments and public utilities—first warned in a 1994 paper written for the American Public Power Association: “The history of the electric power industry casts substantial doubt on the notion that our nation can depend on competition among cable and telephone companies alone... to ensure not only prompt and affordable, but also universal, access to the benefits of the information superhighway.”

....
In 1935, he (Roosevelt) created the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), which gave loans and other help to small towns and farmer cooperatives interested in setting up their own power systems. The REA turned out to be one of the New Deal's most successful programs. Within two years, hundreds of new municipal power utilities were up and running across the country, and within 20 years, virtually all of rural America had electricity, provided either by rural co-ops or big utilities spurred to action by municipal competition. Baller  concluded: “The plain, hard truth is that universal electric service would never have developed on a timely basis in the absence of municipally owned electric utilities and rural electric cooperatives”—which still account for more than a quarter of the power in the country today.

It’s likely that the FCC has a major struggle ahead over the allocation and specific application of both licenses and federal monies, both with Congress and the many powerful special interests in the telecommunications and broadband industries.

One of the proposals in the upcoming National Broadband Plan outlines re-allocating at least a portion of the over $8 Billion Universal Service Fund towards broadband promotion and internet access as a necessary service, much like telephone access was formalized in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Genachowski hinted at the possibility of increasing broadband infrastructure and programs on tribal lands by using a portion of this Fund.

There will be fireworks in Congress over the contents of this Plan. It is essential that in the upcoming debate, residents of tribal reservations are not left starving for access and resources once again.

All dreams spin out from the same web. --Hopi

• National Broadband Plan
• FCC Chairman’s Remarks to the National Congress of American Indians
• Ten Years of Reducing The Gap: Bringing Speed and Reach to Remote America
• Tribal Digital Village
• Navajo Broadband
• WorldBank.org - Connecting People and Making Markets Work
• Global Broadband Adoption Rates by Household
• Effort to Widen U.S. Internet Access Sets Up Battle
• Foreign Affairs/Thomas Bleha: Down to the Wire
• New Consortium Funded by the European Commission Established to Increase Mobile Broadband Infrastructure Density Tenfold
• Broadband Plan Calls for Up to $25 Billion in New Spending
• Let there be WiFi

FCC Broadband.gov webcasts

• Workshop: Unserved/Underserved Deployment webcast - from August 12, 2009

• Workshop: Diversity and Civil Rights Issues in Broadband Deployment and Adoption webcast - from October 2, 2009

There are few more arrogant and wrongheaded statements of policy and intent than that offered by Jim DeMint in his own words:

"If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him, and will show that we can, along with the American people [an afterthought] begin to push those "freedom solutions" [what the hell is he talking about? As opposed to socialism, I guess] that work in every area of our society.

There are many odd things about that short statement, not least of which is the idea that only one side fought at Waterloo, which is why Napoleon must have lost. Therefore, any reference to Waterloo here on in must refer to the losing side.

Of course, there was a triumphant side to that as well. And Republicans are getting mighty nervous about the fact that the Waterloo analogy might not be working out for them as planned.

Robert Shrum wrote a lovely post about the scorecard: Is Obama winning?

I doubt that congressional Democrats will heed the solicitous advice of Republicans that the only way to save themselves politically is to forsake health reform. They understand, as the president has argued, that they are far better off with Americans experiencing the bill than fearing it. I’m also convinced that enough members of the Progressive Caucus will consult their consciences—and conclude that health coverage for 30 million more Americans is more urgent than even the best-intentioned demand for all or nothing. (If the GOP and the insurance industry so bitterly oppose the bill, then it must be worth passing.)

In fact, looking at who's aligned against change, and who is writing about it, is rather instructive. For example we have (David Bielspiel's description) geezer pollsters Caddell and Schoen warning Democrats' blind ambition : Health-reform push could spell doom for the party..., easily refuted here by Joel Benenson, if anyone actually cared what Caddell and Schoen had to say. Doug Schoen in 2008 brilliantly predicted an easy win for John McCain if only he'd pick Joe Lieberman for VP:

Sen. John F. Kerry tried hard to recruit McCain as his running mate in 2004. Had McCain agreed, Kerry would almost certainly be president today. By offering the vice presidency to a well-regarded moderate such as his old friend Joe Lieberman, McCain would go a long way to ensuring victory in November -- unless Clinton or Obama beats him to the punch.

Uh, yeah. The fact that the GOP delegates would have walked out en masse from their own nominating convention doesn't play into the equation? Only in Washington are repeated failures rehired on the theory that they are 'experienced'. It's the same theory that rehires baseball managers, and brings John McCain back to Meet the Press every Sunday, and makes reporters cover whatever accusation comes out of Dick Cheney's mouth as if it's seriously thought out and reflects policy.

Then there's our friends, the Republicans.

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, warned Democrats on Tuesday that Republicans would use the issue of health care to bludgeon them in the November midterm elections if Democrats succeeded in passing a comprehensive overhaul.

Really? If it's so devastating to Democrats, just sit back and let it pass, Mitch. Let's call your bluff.

We also have the propaganda machine on the right, the ones who have labeled this "ObamaCare" and "socialized medicine". The trouble is, Obama remains popular and for that matter, so is socialized medicine. There's nothing as dumb as an argument that says "I don't want your government-run health care plan, and don't touch my Medicare."

So where do things really stand? Here

The office of Rep. Chris Van Hollen, who is the assistant to Speaker Pelosi, sent a memo to Democratic staffers today telling them to clear members' schedule for next weekend, saying a vote could come as early as Friday or Saturday, and noting that it was no coincidence that President Obama pushed back his trip abroad from March 18 to March 21st.

and here (sensitivity set to "high"):

I don't recall if the original Waterloo was a scheduled event, but chances are CSPAN didn't cover it the way this century's version will be. The question for Republicans is what's their plan B?

Sunday funnies, and did you remember to "spring ahead"?

Frank Rich:

The opening salvo, fired on Fox News during Thanksgiving week, aroused little notice: Dana Perino, the former White House press secretary, declared that "we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term." Rudy Giuliani upped the ante on ABC’s "Good Morning America" in January. "We had no domestic attacks under Bush," he said. "We’ve had one under Obama." (He apparently meant the Fort Hood shootings.)...

Could any of this non-reality-based shtick stick? So far the answer is No. Rove’s book and Keep America Safe could be the best political news for the White House in some time. This new eruption of misinformation and rancor vividly reminds Americans why they couldn’t wait for Bush and Cheney to leave Washington.

But the old regime’s attack squads are relentless and shameless.

That they are.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, representing pro-life women:

Republicans oppose President Obama's health-care reform for many reasons: It will cost too much, it's "socialist," it's big government at its worst. But they are letting Stupak and his fellow antiabortion Democrats lead on that issue. And the more the GOP ignores abortion and focuses on economic populism -- taking up the "tea party" cause -- the more the Republicans risk leaving crucial votes behind in November.

Doubtful, but intriguing.

Howell Raines:

One question has tugged at my professional conscience throughout the year-long congressional debate over health-care reform, and it has nothing to do with the public option, portability or medical malpractice. It is this: Why haven't America's old-school news organizations blown the whistle on Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News, for using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration -- a campaign without precedent in our modern political history?

Now there's a question "real" journalists should be addressing.

Nate Silver:

But what if we don't build in an exception for the so-called "liberal no's" -- that is, simply take every vote at face value? It turns out, then, that [Artur] Davis is no longer the least valuable Democrat. Instead, it is Dennis Kucinich, who voted against health care, the hate crimes bill, the budget, the cap-and-trade bill, and financial regulation -- all ostensibly from the left -- in spite of coming from from the strongly Democratic Ohio 10th district near Cleveland.

If you want to know why Kucinich "don't get no respect", you're looking at it. Give him points for the theater, but get it done.

Steven Pearlstein says

If you read only one book about the causes of the recent financial crisis, let it be Michael Lewis's, "The Big Short."

Better than House of Cards? Well, Lewis did write Liar's Poker.

Friday morning the Texas Board of Education voted to approve changing the state's social studies curriculum to make it more closely reflect the views of God's Own Party. Among the changes are:

• Replacing the heathen, Thomas Jefferson, with theologian John Calvin;

• Tearing down the wall between church and state;

• Rejecting "capitalism" in favor of the "free-enterprise system"; and

• Prohibiting discussion of "transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else."

Given Texas' influence on the national textbook market, you're probably better off home-schooling your kids. Or not.

Tonight's Rescue Rangers are BentLiberal, srkp23, jlms qkw, watercarrier4diogenes, sunspark says, shayera and Got a Grip.

This evening's selections for your edification are:

• bobswern discovered just which emperors were fiddling while Rome Wall Street burned thanks to the NYT: NY Fed, Ernst & Young Enabled Lehman; Others Involved. (shayera)
• At serious risk to personal sanity, Avenging Angel dares to enter The Bizarro World of the Bush Torture Apologists. (sunspark says)
• desmoinesdem bravely uncovers some serious crazy in the Heartland in Caution: Now entering a fact- and logic-free zone. (jlms qkw)
• Having received more than enough FWD: OMG emails, Merry Light says I'm fighting back (with poll) and delivers a solid lesson in how YOU can do the same. (watercarrier4diogenes)
• Scott Cobb provides details about a challenge to the Texas death penalty in a Houston courtroom and the efforts of some students to effect change in Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break, March 15-19, 2010. (BentLiberal)
• In an ongoing series, icemilkcoffee fleshes out some lesser known benefits of the Senate HCR bill in Devil in the Details 3: Medicaid goes Mainstream. (BentLiberal)
• mole33 reports on CREDO's $2,680,211 in Donations to Progressive Causes. (jlms qkw)
• Dems2006 shares the touching story of why she does what she does in Not quite seven... (jlms qkw)
• WarrenS shares his experiences Hanging Out With A Man From Saturn. (srkp23)

jotter has High Impact Diaries: March 12, 2010.

carolita has Top Comments – 3-13-10 – Endangered Attractions Edition.

Please use this open thread to promote your own diaries or your favorites of the day.

Last week, Devilstower introduced the Saturday Evening Geek Out: S.E.G.O. -- Science Fiction You Should Be Reading, and while I don't have his expertise (or writing ability), I've been arguing with the likes of Larry Niven since the 70's when I was a SF geek in college (I went to an engineering school, and we had strong opinions about what was real and what was not, and on the engineering side, what ought to be included and what ought to be thrown away.)

Now, these days there's more eclectic choices. You can get sucked in to the newest Final Fantasy video game (the franchise is up to thirteen), just out a few days, or turn to English translations of Japanese graphic novels ("It's not a comic book, it's a graphic novel!!") like Rurouni Kenshin by Nobuhiro Watsuki, my favorite of the genre, though you gotta love Bone. And there's always The Crow and Watchmen, though if you only know them from the movies, you've missed the best parts.

But if you lean towards the fantasy side of sci fi the way I do, there's got to be a place on your shelf for the early twentieth century masters. One of my favorites is Ernest Bramah (Kai Lung's Golden Hours):  

The first edition included a preface by Hilaire Belloc, which has also been a feature of every edition since. Its importance in the history of fantasy literature was recognized by its reissuing by Ballantine Books as the forty-fifth volume of the celebrated Ballantine Adult Fantasy series  in April, 1972. The Ballantine edition includes an introduction by Lin Carter.

which I discovered as a teen when the Ballentine paperback reissues came out in the 70's. Peter Wimsey, Dorothy Sayer's great detective (and erudite romantic interest, as she fell in love with her own character - but mysteries are for another day) was familiar with Kai Lung, mentioning it in both Busman's Honeymoon and Gaudy Night.

Another great author from the era, short story writer Clark Ashton Smith, was introduced by the Ballantine series, and I still have decaying copies of Zothique (my favorite, lots of magic, baleful wizardry, necromancers and the like), Hyperborea (if you want barbarians, there's always Robert E. Howard's classic Conan series, finished by modern authors), Xiccarph (Ashtom Smith's most science fiction-y stories) and Poseidonis (really, tales of lost Atlantis.) Ashton Smith published his stories in Weird Tales, and with the likes of Howard, Lord Dunsany (pure fantasy, like The King of Elfland's Daughter), HP Lovecraft (horror, my favorite being At the Mountains of Madness), the 30's were a golden era of that kind of fiction.

In fact, you can tell from the above that I really like the short story as a vehicle for fantasy and SF.

You can also look for modern equivalents and parallels, if you wish. For example, I found Barry Hughart's Master Li and Number Ten Ox series thoroughly delightful and very reminiscent of Bramah's work. Hughart found the publishing biz tough going, so there are only three novels in the series.

And if I had to vote for a modern fantasy master, I'd list Roger Zelazny (Amber series) and Jack Vance (The Green Pearl) among the greats, and with George R.R. Martin making his way into the pantheon (assuming that J.R.R. Tolkien is his own category.)

Finally, I have to make mention of the sword and sorcery genre, encapsulated by the works of Michael Moorcock (Elric and the eternal hero cycles) and Fritz Lieber (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.) Lots of necromancers here, too, though usually the focus is more on enchanted weapons and Joe (the swordsman) Sixpack's task of staying alive in a world full of evil banksters enchanters and evil politicians kings.

By the way, there was a fun response to Deviltower's diary here: The Other Science Fiction: A Response to Devilstower by hepsheba.

I'm sure you have your own favorite list of things you like to read when you're sick of reading about Republican obstructionism, and we'd love to hear about them. After all, if it's Saturday, it's S.E.G.O.

On this, the 60th birthday of American actor William H. Macy (who, it seemed, was featured in every movie that I watched between 1997 and 2002), we have a bursting-at-the-seams weekend edition of the Wrap....

THE U.S. SENATE

CO-Sen: New PPP Poll Implies A Toss-Up In Bennet-Norton Duel
Interesting new numbers out late in the week on the competitive Senate race in Colorado. Appointed incumbent Michael Bennet (D) has rebounded a little bit off of his previous lows, and is now dead even with Republican frontrunner Jane Norton, according to new numbers from PPP. The pollsters have Bennet and Norton tied at 43%. Worth noting, however, is that they confirm an interesting Rasmussen finding from last week, in that Democratic primary opponent Andrew Romanoff actually does better, opening up a five-point edge over Norton (44-39). In other Colorado news, Bennet got some good news on Friday, when suburban Denver Congressman Ed Perlmutter offered his endorsement.

LA-Sen: Dueling Polls on the Bayou on the Vitter-Melancon Race
The latest polls out of Louisiana on the Senate battle between Republican Senator David Vitter and his Democratic challenger, Charlie Melancon, show a lead for Vitter. How big a lead, of course, depends on who you ask. If you ask Rasmussen, it is a blowout, with Rasmussen showing Vitter up by twenty-three points (57-34). However, Melancon is releasing some nums of his own, courtesy of some internal numbers from Anzalone Liszt. That poll shows Melancon trailing by just ten points, with Vitter failing to reach 50% of the vote (48-38).

WI-Sen: Right-Wing Poll (No...not THAT Poll) Says Thompson Up Big
A new poll from the right-wing Wisconsin Policy Research Institute is getting positively Rasmuss-ey about the prospects of a Tommy Thompson challenge to incumbent Democratic Senator Russ Feingold. They claim Thompson has a 12-point lead over Feingold (51-39). Of course, Thompson has not declared his candidacy, preferring an almost Giuliani-esque flirtation with the race, instead. If the GOP falls back on their leading declared candidate, millionaire developer Terrence Wall, it doesn't go so well for the Red Team--Feingold blasts Wall by fifteen (47-32).

THE U.S. HOUSE

CT-04: Himes Draws New Challenger, Who Launches With Polling Data
This was quite obviously a work in progress, given the fact that he was polling the race two months ago, but Easton First Selectman Tom Herrmann announced mid-week that he was seeking the GOP Congressional nomination to challenge freshman Democrat Jim Himes. The press release announcing Herrmann's launch pointed out that he has already banked over $300K. One possible dash of cold water--even his own internal polling (done by Wilson Research) had him down nineteen points to Himes (49-30).

IN-09: Sodrel Internal Gives Him Huge Lead in GOP Primary
People anticipating a fifth consecutive showdown between Democrat Rep. Baron Hill and Republican Mike Sodrel are looking like they'll get their re-re-re-rematch, if a new internal poll by Sodrel is any indication. The poll, conducted for Sodrel by Wilson Research, gives Sodrel a huge lead in the GOP primary, with 46% of the vote. Primary challengers Travis Hankins (19%) and Todd Young (13%) lie well behind. The primary is now less than two months away.

NY-29: GOP Appears To Coalesce Around Reed After Brooks Stands Down
In a move that seems to greatly reduce the likelihood of a competitive GOP primary in the race to succeed the departed Democratic Rep. Eric Massa, Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks decided not to run for Congress. This seems to ensure that former Corning Mayor Tom Reed, who entered the race long before Massa's high-profile meltdown, is in the driver's seat as the GOP nominee. Democrats are still hunting for a candidate, although several names are floating around.

PA-12: GOP Picks Their Candidate, Touching Off Major Fireworks
Democrats have to be nothing short of ecstatic with how their week has gone in Southwestern Pennsylvania. After naming their special election nominee (former Murtha staffer Mark Critz), the Dems avoided a potentially bloody primary as former state treasurer Barbara Hafer decided to stand down. Later in the week, the GOP followed suit, and nominated businessman Tim Burns as their standard-bearer, snubbing 2008 nominee William Russell in the process. Russell, to the joy of Dems everywhere, took his defeat a little more personally, charging that the fix was in and confirming that he would continue to run in the primary for November's general election.

As an excellent piece by Reid Wilson of Hotline On Call points out, this puts Burns in a potentially untenable position. If he tacks too much to the center in order to beat Critz, he could find the fairly well-heeled Russell (who is one of the clients of Base Connect, formerly known as BMW Direct) clipping him in the knees. If he tries to win the primary with Russell, he could compromise his ability to win the special election. It is not an enviable dance, and the political neophyte is going to have to show some pretty impressive campaign chops to pull it off.

THE GUBERNATORIAL RACES

FL-Gov: New PPP Poll Confirms Likely GOP Hold In Sunshine State
It has been a good long while since likely Democratic gubernatorial nominee Alex Sink has been at parity with her likely GOP rival, Bill McCollum. A new poll from PPP indicates that things for Sink might be getting worse, rather than better. PPP shows McCollum now up by thirteen points (44-31) over Sink, who was dead-even with McCollum a few months ago.

MN-Gov: Rasmussen Says Gov's Race Is A Toss-Up
The Ras-a-Palooza cools off a bit at the end of the week, with only a small handful of new polls. One of them is in Minnesota, where the Ras tests the multicandidate fields for Governor with a third-party alternative in the form of Independence Party candidate Tom Horner. Most of the matchups are very close, with Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak (D) and state legislator Marty Seifert (R) performing the best in their respective parties. Horner, for what it is worth, logs between 7-10% of the vote.

NH-Gov: Lynch Still Leads Strongly, Even According to Ras
Democrat John Lynch has been easily re-elected Governor of New Hampshire over the past few cycles, and new numbers from Rasmussen show that his grip on the governor's mansion in the Granite State does not appear to be weakening. Former state HHS Commissioner John Stephen comes the closest for the GOP, and he still trails by fifteen points (50-35). The other prospective GOPers trail by 19 and 26 points.

WI-Gov: Even GOP Pollster Sees Competitive Gov Race
The GOP-friendly poll from WPRI mentioned earlier vis-a-vis Senator Feingold also looked at the open-seat Gov's race to replace retiring Democratic Governor Jim Doyle. They, not surprisingly, find Republican Scott Walker in the lead, but, given the poll's sponsor, it is reasonably close: Walker leads by four (36-32). If former Congressman Mark Neumann is the GOP nominee, the race is all knotted up at 34-34.

The behavior of Bart Stupak over the last several months, but particularly the last few weeks, in the hcr debate has been deplorable. He refuses to acknowledge the reality that his crusade is built on a lie--the lie that there is federal funding for abortion coverage in the Senate bill. Now that he's not the center of leadership attention anymore, he's escalating his lies and his crusade.

First he attacked Henry Waxman saying Waxman's argument against his effort was to tell Stupak "But we want to pay for abortions." Then, in an interview with NRO, levelled this bizarre accusation against his colleagues:

Stupak notes that his negotiations with House Democratic leaders in recent days have been revealing. “I really believe that the Democratic leadership is simply unwilling to change its stance,” he says. “Their position says that women, especially those without means available, should have their abortions covered.” The arguments they have made to him in recent deliberations, he adds, “are a pretty sad commentary on the state of the Democratic party.”

What are Democratic leaders saying? “If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing,” Stupak says. “Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue — come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we’re talking about.”

Many Democrats in the House do believe that a person should not be denied a legal, medical procedure because of her gender and her economic circumstances. There is broad opposition in the party to the Hyde amendment that has enshrined that cruel discrimination. Stupak's saying that this is actually the Dems being anti-baby because they cost too much is a lie worthy of Glenn Beck. But he sure as hell knows how to play to his audience.

But here's what Stupak's real problem is: “They’re ignoring me." Since his bluff was called, he's not the center of attention from leadership and the White House any more. The limelight is fading, and the only attention he's likely to get now is over the issue whether the years he received subsized rent at the living in The Family's C Street house violated House rules.

And the politics of the issue are pretty rough. “This has really reached an unhealthy stage,” Stupak says. “People are threatening ethics complaints on me. On the left, they’re really stepping it up. Every day, from Rachel Maddow to the Daily Kos, it keeps coming. Does it bother me? Sure. Does it change my position? No.”

Poor, poor Bart Stupak. My heart bleeds.

What's coming up on Sunday Kos ....

• In honor of Women's History Month, Angry Mouse will explain what's wrong with Women's History Month.
• Page van der Linden will take you on a virtual tour of the Hanford Site in Washington State, with an updated look at the environmental legacy of the Cold War nuclear arms race.
• DemFromCT will take a look at the changing health reform landscape in “why I support health care reform” and argues for passing the current bill despite its flaws because it’s the right thing to do.
• exmearden will examine the political and functional obstacles of broadband access on Native American reservations in the US, and how upcoming proposals by the FCC may impact this access.
• Devilstower will report on feeling down, Down Under.
• Dante Atkins will extol the virtues of pragmatism.

Barely a month ago, the New York State Senate voted 53-8 to expel Hiram Monserrate after he was convicted of assaulting his girlfriend ... a conviction that netted him "three years probation, 250 hours of community service, a $1000 fine, and one year of domestic abuse counseling."

But in this Tuesday's special election to replace him, Monserrate managed to get on the ballot and is attempting to regain his old seat. And he's attempting to do so by using just the sort of ethical standards you'd expect from someone who would slash his girlfriend's face with broken glass.

Toss in Monserrate's homophobic attacks against his opponent, his anti-marriage equality vote, and his Jesus complex, and you have all the makings of a Republican ... which he was for a about a week last year.

Help keep this anti-women, anti-gay, anti-Democratic criminal out of the New York State Senate.

The special election is this Tuesday, March 16th, so volunteer and help the folks in New York elect José Peralta in NY's SD-13.

Last seen withdrawing from the California Gubernatorial primary against a not-yet-officially-announced Jerry Brown, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has entered the fray for the second spot on the ballot: Lieutenant Governor.

Why should anyone care? Well, first of all, because the Lieutenant Governor is not an entirely useless post: it comes with ex officio positions on important boards such as the State Lands Commission and the University of California Board of Regents. But with Jerry Brown uncontested at the top of the ticket, the Lieutenant Governor's race is the highest-profile contested election on the Democratic Primary ballot this June--and Democrats are going to counted on to show up in June to support some really good measures on the statewide ballot, and defeat some really ugly ones.

Newsom still has good name recognition and a decent base of support owing to his failed run for Governor earlier in the year, and his entry into the Lt. Gov. race has prompted State Senator Dean Florez to drop out--leaving the voters to decide between Newsom and Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who is seeking to be the first female Lieutenant Governor in the history of the State.

This race is going to be the top race to watch in the Democratic Primary--not only because it's the most top-tier, but also because it's likely to see some sparks. Garry South, who has a reputation as a hard-hitting consultant, used to work for Newsom's Gubernatorial campaign--and he now works for Janice Hahn.

No statistically reliable polls have been done on this race yet, but I would expect Newsom to have an initial lead based on name recognition, while Hahn will spend the campaign trying to increase her own name ID and drive up Newsom's negatives.

Meanwhile, there are some in San Francisco who are pulling for Newsom--just so he won't be mayor any more. That's not a good sign. Either way, it's a shame that when we really need Democratic turnout in California, this race is the best we can do for top-tier.

By popular request in comment threads and emails, I'll be putting together a Saturday digest of election-oriented diaries from now until November. This project emerged from the Community Power! Election Season diary written Feb. 20. Next week I'll introduce you to a couple of other Kossacks who will be joining me in running the project.

Each digest will include a list of election diaries published during the previous week and categorized by region. A separate section will include diaries written in the previous week by incumbents, new candidates and wannabe candidates. (Diaries by incumbents may or may not be directly related to the coming elections.)

Digests will also focus on a few tips for making diaries more persuasive, informative and written in a way that encourages everyone to read them even if they live 2000 miles away from the spotlighted contest. This week, we're talking headlines.

Just as with a story in a newspaper or magazine, a headline can make or break a diary. That is, you can attract an audience or drive it away by the words and structure you choose. Crafting great headlines is something even some of the best writers never quite get the knack of, but everybody can train themselves to become better at it. Too many writers spend hours on research and writing their diaries, then slap on a 30-second headline. Spend some time at it. A good practice is to write three or four possible headlines and choose the best one. Happily for bloggers, some of the old rules from the old media – like character counts – don't apply in wwwLand. But some do. Here are 10 guidelines to think about:

• Headlines are bait. Instill curiosity: "Paternity Test Demanded for Florida Abstinence Campaigner"; "Voters Eager to Punish Liberals, Selves"

• Conversational headlines appeal to the most readers.

• Use the active voice. Good verbs work wonders. "To be" conjugations bore readers.

• There's power in humor, but serious stories suffer from overly cute headlines. Headlines with a twist of an old cliché reel in readers. But take care not to twist too far.

• Beware. Double entendres can help or hurt. "Cops Pinch Lewd Nude" works; however, "Clinton Wins Budget; More Lies Ahead" has problems.

• Be succinct. Short headlines are punchier and easier to read. Ernest Hemingway told a whole story once in six words - "For sale: baby shoes, never used." A helluva good headline, too.

• Match the headline to the story. Don't deceive. Nobody likes being taken for a fool.

• If the diary is about a candidate, the candidate's and/or district's name should usually appear in the headline.

• DON'T WRITE HEADLINES IN ALL CAPS. Besides "shouting," they are hard to read.

• If it's not BREAKING! don't lie about it.

From this week's collection of election diaries, I've picked what I think are four solid headlines. But even most of them could be tweaked:

NY-Sen: GOP eyes notorious Bush war-flack Dan Senor. (Perfect)

Sen. Richard Burr: Playing Politics in Right Field. (N.C. Sen. Richard Burr: Playing Politics in Right Field)

A call to Netroots - There's a Dem willing to fight against DeMint. (Calling the Netroots - There's a Dem willing to fight DeMint)

Is it all about the Benjamins? The GOP primary for governor in Wisconsin. (Is it all about the Benjamins? In Wisconsin's GOP primary, yes)

The election digest follows below.

• Looks like Marco Rubio has been playing fast and loose with money--about $600,000 worth, according to a detailed analysis by the St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald, and it's catching up with him:

  • Rubio failed to disclose $34,000 in expenses — including $7,000 he paid himself — for one of the committees in 2003 and 2004, as required by state law
  • One committee paid relatives nearly $14,000 for what was incorrectly described to the IRS as "courier fees" and listed a nonexistent address for one of them. Another committee paid $5,700 to his wife, who was listed as the treasurer, much of it for "gas and meals."
  • He billed more than $51,000 in unidentified "travel expenses'' to three different credit cards — nearly one-quarter of the committee's entire haul. Charges are not required to be itemized, but other lawmakers detailed almost all of their committee expenses.

  Rubio's spending continued in 2005 when the Republican Party of Florida handed him a credit card to use at his own discretion. While serving as House speaker in 2007 and 2008, he charged thousands of dollars in restaurant tabs to the state party at the same time taxpayers were subsidizing his meals in Tallahassee.

  The article explores Rubio's rapid rise in Florida politics, from "barely solvent" state lawmaker to the flush U.S. Senate candidate we're hearing about today, all courtesy of special interest money. -- SusanG

• Talking Points Memo - Former Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN) was for it before he was agin it. Prior to railing against bailouts in his current attempt to get back his old Senate seat, Coats was paid to lobby TARP for bailout money for Chrysler and its vulture fund owners, Cerberus. --Susang

• "Pro-life" terrorist Randall Terry is pushing a new online tool to allow Catholics to more easily complain to Vatican officials about American bishops who refuse to deny communion to pro-choice politicians. Naturally, Randall is mum on whether bishops should deny communion to pro-death penalty, pro-war politicians.--Angry Mouse

• Now this is a great idea:

  Every time we hear something sexist, rape-defending, victim-blaming, or flat-out misogynistic (and also just plain prejudice - whether it be sizeist, classist, racist, ableist, or anything else), a nickel goes into Our Jars. We plan on doing this for a year. At the end of the year, the money will go to a charity that works towards ending violence.

  --Angry Mouse

• Some not-so-excellent news for McCain: his letter from military leaders who support DADT is signed by a bunch of dead guys.--Angry Mouse

• A Battle of Wanat Silver Star recipient receives a potentially career-ending reprimand...for the same attack. This WaPo article from early February provides additional background on both the battle and the subsequent reprimand.

• Cable providers lose appeal against FCC ban. Friday in D.C., "... a federal appeals court ruled that companies like Cablevision and Comcast must continue to make programming they own available to satellite companies."

• Our own David Waldman will be appearing bright and early (very early indeed due to the time change) on CSPAN's Washington Journal at 7:45 AM EDT tomorrow. --SusanG

I'm in Austin for South by Southwest, and thought about slacking this week. But SusanG would've kicked my ass.

And there's some good stuff below.

Update: And it turns out that the first email is a fake. I knew it! Creative as hell, though.

Obama didn't postpone his Asia trip just for optics, though the optics--and relations with a House that wasn't too pleased at another relatively arbitrary deadline--are important. The March 18 deadline was slated to be his early departure to take the kids to Indonesia on their spring break. The official business part of the trip doesn't start until Monday the following Monday.

His trip postponement also means, and now we have leadership confirmation, that they're nearing in on the actual vote in the House on the reconciliation package. Pelosi says it could happen next week.

"We stand ready to stay as long as it takes to pass the bill," Pelosi said at her weekly press conference this morning, adding that Obama's delay "increases the prospects that we will be here--since he'll be here--three more days."

After her conference, her spokesman Nadeam Elshami added "If we have to be here next weekend or the week after we will."

Pelosi was once again careful to note that the House's timeline for passage of reform depends largely on when CBO hands them a final analysis, and that could come as early as today.

To put a period on that, Chris Van Hollen's office sent a memo out to House Dem staffers Friday, "telling them to clear members' schedule for next weekend, saying a vote could come as early as Friday or Saturday." And the House Budget Committee announced on it's schedule that it will begin markup of the instructions for the reconciliation bill Monday at 3:00 p.m., EDT. That's the beginning of the markup process.

Keep a close eye on the various whip counts, though some members will likely continue to play coy for as long as they can.

This is one helluva letter. Reid, to McConnell, in part:

“While Republicans were distorting the facts in the health care debate and inflicting delay after needless delay, millions of Americans have continued to suffer as they struggle to afford to stay healthy, stay out of bankruptcy and stay in their homes. Thousands of Americans lose their health care every day, and tens of thousands of the uninsured have lost their lives since this debate began.”

“Many Republicans now are demanding that we simply ignore the progress we’ve made, the extensive debate and negotiations we’ve held, the amendments we’ve added (including more than 100 from Republicans) and the votes of a supermajority in favor of a bill whose contents the American people unambiguously support. We will not. We will finish the job.”

“As you know, the vast majority of bills developed through reconciliation were passed by Republican Congresses and signed into law by Republican Presidents – including President Bush’s massive, budget-busting tax breaks for multi-millionaires. Given this history, one might conclude that Republicans believe a majority vote is sufficient to increase the deficit and benefit the super-rich, but not to reduce the deficit and benefit the middle class. Alternatively, perhaps Republicans believe a majority vote is appropriate only when Republicans are in the majority. Either way, we disagree.”

It would be lovely to think this signals the end to the myth of Dems thinking there's a hope of bipartisanship with this Republican crowd. But it also points up something we've been talking about here since Chuck Schumer raised the possibility of using reconcilation to pass healthcare reform way back last summer--the best way to break Republican--and ConservaDem--obstruction is to prove that you are willing to bypass them to get the job done. Had the reconciliation trigger been pulled way back when, some of the ensuing mess might have been avoided.

DanK Is Back talks about this more in his diary.

As a bonus, here's some reconciliation eye candy from the Dems, a reconciliation primer.

Words fail.

In a BBC interview, Karl Rove, who was known as "Bush's brain", said he "was proud we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists".

He said waterboarding, which simulates drowning, should not be considered torture.

Perhaps Rove should have been waterboarded by investigators to determine his role in the Valerie Plame outing. Maybe it's not too late to give that a try. Want to volunteer to be waterboarded, Karl?

But what matters to you – what matters to our country – is not what happens in the next election, but what we do to lift up the next generation.  And the fact is, there are few issues that speak more directly to our long term success as a nation than issues concerning the education we provide to our children.

President Obama announced in his weekly address this morning an "overhaul" of the No Child Left Behind Act that his administration will deliver to Congress Monday, a revision, he said, that will concede that while "the federal government can play a leading role in encouraging the reforms and high standards we need, the impetus for that change will come from states, and from local schools and school districts."

His address led by sounding an alarm regarding a report released last week indicating other countries are surpassing America in the educational realm, and he pointed to the glory days of the 20th century--replete with new schools, the GI Bill for veterans and excellence in math and science--as a model to remember as we move ahead. Our current inadequacies, he said, are a major cause for concern.

Not only does that risk our leadership as a nation, it consigns millions of Americans to a lesser future.  For we know that the level of education a person attains is increasingly a prerequisite for success and a predictor of the income that person will earn throughout his or her life.  Beyond the economic statistics is a less tangible but no less painful reality: unless we take action – unless we step up – there are countless children who will never realize their full talent and potential. 
 
I don’t accept that future for them.  And I don’t accept that future for the United States of America.  That’s why we’re engaged in a historic effort to redeem and improve  our public  schools: to raise the expectations for our students and for ourselves, to recognize and reward excellence, to improve performance in troubled schools, and to give our kids and our country the best chance to succeed in a changing world.

His remarks were short on specifics, long on generalities: good schools will be rewarded, districts with failing schools will be asked to "commit to change," teachers will be better prepared and supported. While it's encouraging to hear even a generalized commitment to improving education in this country, it sure would be nice if the entire subject of education wasn't always tied to simply churning out better workers (Obama's by no means alone in this -- almost everyone who addresses education takes this same dispiriting tack). Yes, competing in the global economy, fostering prosperity, having marketable skills are all important. But it would be refreshing to have more than lip service paid to the value of education's enrichment of a human life and of our shared civilization, instead of focusing solely on income potential and/or the value American citizens bring to businesses as drones and cogs in the economic engine.

The full transcript can be found at the White House website and beneath the fold.

Ursus americanus kermodei, or Spirit Bears, are a beautiful and genetically unique subpopulation of American Black Bears with a creamy coat of great import to the natural and native history of Canada. They are not albinos or polar bears, and may well represent a subspecies in the process of adapting -- dare I say evolving -- to the rugged white water rapids and icy, snowy terrain of Canada. Sadly, under pressure from climate change and habitat destruction, the National Resource Defense Council reports their final act in the evolutionary saga might soon be extinction:

Trophy hunting of any bear is an archaic and unacceptable practice but it is especially deplorable when bear populations are in decline. Guides believe that there may be far fewer than the already low government counts of 400 white-coated Spirit Bears ... Only one in ten black bears in the Spirit Bear's range carry the recessive gene that will give its cubs a white coat. So, even if white-coated bears themselves are protected, hunting still puts their future at risk. Meanwhile, white cubs will face starvation if their mothers are killed ...

• In addition to being a Discover Science Blogger and MIT Knight Fellow in Science Journalism, Chris Mooney is producing podcasts at Point of Inquiry. Speaking of Discover, these gorgeous science illustrations from the mag speak for themselves.
• I'll have more on Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming when it becomes available in a couple of months. But I can already tell that you're gonna want to read this book.
• A movie about Richard Garriott's adventure in space is premiering at SXSW:

  Gaming pioneer Richard Garriott of Austin, who paid $30 million to travel to the International Space Station in 2008, says that within three to five years, the “barnstorming era of space will absolutely captivate the public’s interest.”

  Daily Kos interviewed Garriott on his recent spaceflight last Fall and he was nice enough to give us a personal tour of his home full of fascinating antiques and space science curios.

Saturday opinions and points of view.

WaPo:

Democratic leaders on Friday stoked expectations that the year-long debate in Congress over health care may be coming to an end, after President Obama delayed his upcoming trip to the South Pacific and House leaders indicated they could deliver a final bill for his signature by the end of next week.

Finally, no more Friedman units. We hope.

Charles Blow:

Welcome to Ticklegate.

And it's no laughing matter. Sexual harassment never is.

NY Times editorial:

People who met with Mr. Obama asked the same thing. His response: Get some Republicans on board, then we’ll discuss it. The fate of immigration reform, then, hangs on its ability to win Republican votes. In today’s Washington, that’s enough to make anyone want to reach for the plug and pull it.

Here's why:

Dana Milbank:

After a week like that [dissed evry day by different conservatives], most of Graham's colleagues would feel as though they'd lost a tickle fight to Eric Massa. But Graham has heard it all before. "What drives my train," he told me when I reached him late in the week, "is not their approval; it's getting it right."

Pundits are so clever. And that tickle thing. So original.

Robert Shrum:

Is Obama winning?

The president's long-game strategy has confounded a town with a famously short attention span. With Obama doubling down on health reform, our columnist doubles down on Obama.

Reuters:

Vaccines that contain a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal cannot cause autism on their own, a special U.S. court ruled on Friday, dealing one more blow to parents seeking to blame vaccines for their children's illness.

The special U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled that vaccines could not have caused the autism of an Oregon boy, William Mead, ending his family's quest for reimbursement.

"The Meads believe that thimerosal-containing vaccines caused William's regressive autism. As explained below, the undersigned finds that the Meads have not presented a scientifically sound theory," Special Master George Hastings, a former tax claims expert at the Department of Justice, wrote in his ruling.

Can it be stated any more clearly? More:

The federal "vaccines court" ruled Friday in three separate cases that the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal does not cause autism, a finding that supports the broad scientific consensus on the matter but that greatly disappointed parents who are convinced that their child's illness was caused by vaccines.

Thimerosal does not cause autism. It was already established science. It is now established law.