Isn't it pretty arguably unconstitutional to grant DC a house seat without either giving it statehood or else amending the constitution?

A Senate committee voted 11 to 1 today to give the District of Columbia a voting seat in the House. The lone dissenter was John McCain, who offered a pretty foolish defense.

Why not just take all the land currently in the District not currently used by or reserved for US by the federal government and admit it as the new State of Columbia. That would eliminate all the need for dubiously-constitutional half-measures.

Doesn't a "truth and reconciliation" commission come with a threat that if one doesn't participate and tell the truth s/he can and will be prosecuted?

World Net Daily is basically The Onion, just with less creative writers.

Thanks for including the "far right" tag when you mention the Washington Times; it helps put things in perspective. In a media that includes Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and other Murdoch effluvium, the Times stands out as a real paragon of wingnuttery. Like an old, mean dog, it's only to be taken seriously when it's actually dangerous. We can hope that will be less frequent in the future. In the meantime, it deserves a tag on its collar.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) doesn't understand why a very expensive AMT fix had to be in the stimulus package. Neither do I.

I don't know if it would be an economic stimulus per se, but if you got rid of the AMT, you might encourage people to hold on to some stocks for a longer period of time, and therefore buoy the market.

It's a second-order effect, and probably less than the stimulus effect it could have on AMT taxpayers, but still.

Regarding DC, I am in favor of returning the city of Washington, DC to the state of Maryland. It would simply become a county and a Congressional district within Maryland, with its own representative in the House and would be represented by Maryland's two senators. There would be a very small Federal district that would include actual Federal buildings and monuments and so forth. Otherwise it would have a status within the state similar to Baltimore.

This seems like a straightforward and fair solution.

I realize there are those who don't like it -- not least, Maryland politicians from Baltimore and the DC suburbs who would not want to compete for power and funds with the new political powerhouse that DC would become within the state.

That's quite the story about the mole, Barack.

If you read it carefully,
you can put together a few facts:
- "T"'s real name is Irina, and
- "V" goes by the workname "Lapin".
- they were only pretending to set up a software development company, in reality they work for Moscow Center.

Oh, how I miss the Wall.

DC voting rights. McCain's l dissenting vote; I think in his mind he has defined "Maverick" as "being against".

50 million people. If any of them are like me, they have been unable to watch a presendential news conference since the last guy told us to go shopping. I've missed the experience of watching/listening to the leader of my country; now with the added benefit of actually having confidence that someone competent is in charge.

Re: "Deal or no deal? The Senate says yes; the House says maybe."

The article that Benen linked to said: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had announced outside the conference meeting room that the deal had been struck, and the three Republicans who have sided with the Senate Democrats also spoke."

This took place before the House conferees had notified the general membership. When are we going to fire Reid's ass from his post as Majority Leader? We couldn't have, it seems, a more bumbling idiot leading the charge in the Senate.

50 million viewers seems astounding. That's roughly 1/6th (15%) of the entire population...for a press conference!

With numbers like this one might get the idea that a major economic crisis was going on.

I don't know about the "fairness to fast-growing states" argument, but I don't see how McCain's reluctance to vote in favor of an almost certainly unconstitutional proposal out of respect for constitutional limits is "foolish."

As for judicial term limits, there are good arguments on both sides. I've certainly seen a number of federal judges who are either insane to begin with or are well past their mental prime but refuse to call it quits; on the other hand term limits do raise all sorts of conflict of interest and improper influence problems. I might tend to support a mandatory retirement age of 65 or 70 rather than term limits.

did you hear about the prominent right-wing website promoting a conspiracy theory that Barack Obama is a Soviet spy?

I don't know Janet Porter, but what a coincidence. I happen to know the same Russian friends, V & T. They never told me about the "chocolate baby", but they did say America would elect our "how you say, village idiot". V added, "I know you will not believe a drunken Moscovite, but this idiot, he does not speak English. He is capitalist aristocrat with highest degree in American style business, but he cannot even run a borscht kitchen with his Daddy's money. He will invade Babylon because God tells him to, and turn your proletariat into diseducated robots."

I wish they had told me the "chocolate baby" story instead. I was depressed for weeks.

"President Obama will reportedly nominate Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske to be director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy."

For this job, I'd prefer somebody who has experience running a drug treatment facility over a cop.

"The lone dissenter was John McCain, who offered a pretty foolish defense."

He's a maverick!

Anyone surprised by the Phoenix thing must not have spent much time there. Place is f-ed up, and I mean that in the kindest way. I would prefer to live in Baltimore, at least there you just have some mean criminals. Phoenix has insane people.

You write: "In light of the profanity-laced video his office distributed this morning, it's hilarious that House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) is an anti-obscenity crusader."

It is hilarious. It's also Repub standard operating procedure.

Reminds me of this: "Two United States Senators implicated in extramarital sexual activity have named themselves as co-sponsors of S. J. RES. 43, dubbed the Marriage Protection Amendment. If ratified, the bill would amend the United States Constitution to state that marriage "shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman." Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID), who was arrested June 11, 2007 on charges of lewd conduct in a Minneapolis airport terminal, is co-sponsoring the amendment along with Sen. David Vitter (R-LA)... In July of 2007, Vitter was identified as a client of a prostitution firm owned by the late Deborah Jeane Palfrey, commonly known as The DC Madam."

* Disasters: brushfires in Australia. -- Steve Benen

It's *BUSH*fires, not *brush*. Just as damaging the ones our ex-pResident started here -- whole towns wiped out, many dead...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Why not just take all the land currently in the District not currently used by or reserved for US by the federal government and admit it as the new State of Columbia. -- cmdicely, @17:32

Thus giving DC the right to elect not just a House Representative but two Senators as well? Love it! Terms like "hissy fit" and "conniptions" don't begin to describe the reaction the Repubs would have, right on the Senate floor :)

And McMaverick can stuff it. Some years ago, Dems were willing to compromise and trade one additional Utah mor...mon for one DC Rep, but, noooo... Repubs wouldn't have it, no sir, no way. So now, hopefully, Dems can have the whole loaf, instead of half.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Soviet* spy? Commies were grooming Barack to take US over, in 1992??? Three years after the fall of communism??? WTF? Was Condi in charge of the grooming process?

Fifty million people out of a nation of 300 mil.

Fifty million people.

What was it that pissy anonymous network exec said? Something like, "People come home from a hard day's work, they don't want to see him on TV. They just want to watch World of Crap," wasn't it?

Peter King says on Hardball, if Obama's stimulus works, then we can have the debate whether it was responsible, or it would have happened anyway, even if nothing had been done.

OMG, I've met Gil Kerlikowske! He's a cool guy.

As far as the AMT reduction being in the stimulus bill I wonder if this was a good idea for people who wanted the bill to have less tax cuts. Congress cuts this tax every year and this year is no different. By putting it in the stimulus bill it may have crowded out "other" tax cuts.

50 million viewers. I watched the whole thing , I could not stomach one minute of W's dog and pony show and would turn to bloggers who would "watch it so you wouldn't have to". With W you always new that everything out of his mouth was a lie including 'and' and 'the' (with apologies top Truman Capote)

Agree with CarlP - The AMT was going to happen anyway, and putting in the stimulus allows the Republican 3 (to whom we owe passage of the bill) to take credit. OK by me.

Congress will restore some of the spending removed from the bill in future legislation, so I'm not worried we've lost anything forever.

"Just three weeks after Inauguration Day, a fairly prominent right-wing blogger has described President Obama as "one of the worst Presidents in American history."

Funny how Democratic Presidents are judged on three weeks while the jury is still out on Bush: waiting for history to judge.

I heard Snowe and Colins on the radio today citing $800B as a number they don't want to exceed. No sound economic reasoning behind the conviction, no rationale other than it being a line drawn in the sand. The stimulus package might as well have started at $2T, since the only thing our stalwart Republican Allies needed was an artificial limit in order to satisfy their republican repuation..

Thanks, Steve for mentioning the BUSHfires in Australia. The link Steve included is to the Australian Red Cross page where you can donate to the relief effort. Its the greatest peacetime disaster in Australian history down here.

Thanks to all.

U.S. banking leaders told the House Financial Services Committee that they're not humiliating failures, guilty of widespread mismanagement.

Good point. They did con the American taxpayers into bailing them out. That's some successful management.

"No one is seriously pushing the Fairness Doctrine....there's no real push for the policy in the first place?"

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_11/015660.php

How about from a US Senator?

http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0209/Sen_Harkin_We_need_the_Fairness_Doctrine_back_.html

The Obama administration needs a name/slogan.
I suggest "The Cool Deal"

anonymous37,

"Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) doesn't understand why a very expensive AMT fix had to be in the stimulus package. Neither do I."

"I don't know if it would be an economic stimulus per se, but if you got rid of the AMT, you might encourage people to hold on to some stocks for a longer period of time, and therefore buoy the market."

It's not about whether to patch the AMT one more time or not, it's about whether a very expensive item like that, which would pass OVERWHELMINGLY if it were brought up as it's own bill, belongs inside the stimulus bill, thereby crowding out space for more job creation spending.

Yeah 'brushfires' doesn't really do justice to firestorms that released energy equivalent to 500 Hiroshimas on Saturday alone...

The temperature was 49 degrees celsius on the day...

...120km winds...

...the radiant heat was fatal up to 200m from the firefront...

...spot fires leaping 15 km ahead of the main fire...

...flames four stories high...

..and great clouds of flammable eucalyptus vapour in rolling airborne fireballs at hurricane speed...

The University of Melbourne's senior lecturer in fire ecology and management, Kevin Tolhurst, said conditions on Black Saturday were some of the worst the world had seen for a potential outbreak.

He said the fires were so hot the energy they released could have supplied Victoria with electricity for at least two years.

Up to 80,000 kilowatts per metre of heat was expelled as the fires raged on Saturday.

Dr Tolhurst said this equalled about 500 atomic bombs landing on Hiroshima.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25037492-661,00.html

This sort of natural fire has never been seen before, anywhere on the planet.

That's why 300 people died.

This sort of natural fire has never been seen before, anywhere on the planet.

Holy crap, I had no idea the fires were that intense. What an unbelievable tragedy.

And it ain't over yet - while the cool change has broken the physics 'feedback loop' of the firestorm there are still more than 30 fires burning... and the heat is returning on Saturday.

Two massive fire complexes are only 20 km apart and moving towards each other.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/wind-change-raises-inferno-alarm-20090211-84sy.html?page=-1

Somne of these fires are just 40 or so km from a city of 3.5 million people.

Watch this:

http://www.theage.com.au/interactive/2009/national/darkestday/slides.html

Nice Post! People should know this.

Was good (and sad) to hear Jonathan Alter of Newsweek lay it on the line on Olbermann today--he flatly said that the stimulus bill is just not enough and we'll likely have to pump more into it as things continue to worsen. Mentioned how shocked he was at how sparsely populated Times Square was as he mulled around today and how empty the restaurants are...

It seems the most effective commentary now involves personal vignettes like this. I say we need more media types to start chiming in like this. Forget the figures and the talk about taxes and so forth--just start saying what you see, hear,feel, smell around you.

As clearly many folks in the republican and banking world are still simply NOT getting just HOW BAD it is.

And I think others are in denial too--many think this is just a temporary thing, just a slowdown in the economy, a hiccup of sorts.

I wish.

Hi Floop - I hope you see this. I have been thinking about my friends in Oz this week. I wanted to tell you that I linked your comments on this thread in my nightly roundup just a few minutes ago. Thanks for the informative post.

Climatic shifts.

We are seeing shifts in global climate patterns; Australia is burning, snow falls in Britain, massive storms everywhere.

The same can be said with our economical climate.

We may have already passed the tipping point towards runaway greenhouse effects as well as runaway economical meltdown.

The only choice is sustainability, enviro-economically.

To get to a future 50 years from now, some of us have got to try and live that future, now.

We sent men to the moon and back. Surely our species has the ability to clean up it's own messes.

I remember hearing George Soros say that if we think the economy is bad, it will seem like a walk in the park compared to global warming. I happen to think he is right.

As for the simulus, the truth is nobody knows what will work. And this printing of money... when China and other nations are already hedging their bets, no longer willing to pay for US's spendthrifts ways, means the dollar can collapse. If that happens, it will be chaos. It will make a Depression look good!

I wonder if anyone is discussing that anywhere.

The "kidnapping capital" of the United States is ... Phoenix, Arizona?
Anti-immigrant hate speech.

Note to Republicans:

SAYING George Bush was probably the worst president ever wasn't what made him so bad.

Rove REALLY did a number on you guys, didn't he?

Obama a communist?

Frankly a much better case can be made that those pushing for only tax cuts for the rich are terrorists in ties. This is bin Laden's next gambit in his fight to destroy America, sending in business executives to destroy the economy. Along with his henchmen in suits, he also uses their houseboys (and senate boys) to further his agenda. To me, this makes more sense than Pres. Obama is a communist mole.