MONDAY'S MINI-REPORT.... Today's edition of quick hits:

* Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has released his new assessment of the war. "The situation in Afghanistan is serious, but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort," General McChrystal said in a statement. The report does not call for additional U.S. troops, but that's likely to come soon.

* The era of one-party dominance in Japan has ended, and the center-left Democratic Party won a huge victory over the weekend against the Liberal Democratic Party.

* The forest fires in California are "still very much out of control."

* Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D) announced today the special election to fill the Senate vacancy left by Ted Kennedy will be held on January 19. On September 9, however, state lawmakers will debate whether to change the law and allow Patrick to appoint an interim placeholder senator.

* Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who's pretending to work on health care reform, sent out a fundraising letter vowing to defeat "Obamacare." The conservative senator's office later said the appeal was referring only to the public option.

* Mike Huckabee made some pretty vile comments about reform and Ted Kennedy last week. Today, instead of apologizing, he doubled down.

* Speaking of vile reform-related rhetoric, say hello to Rep. Pete Olson (R) of Texas.

* Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) still thinks the health care status quo in the United States is fine.

* I neglected to note this strange WaPo piece over the weekend with an overtly Cheney-centric view on torture. Greenwald does the requisite response.

* Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) was involved in a serious boating accident in Montana on Friday, and is hospitalized in stable condition.

* For the first time that anyone can remember, Florida's population is shrinking.

* Michael Scheuer thinks Democrats are "pro-terrorist." What an odd man.

* Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told the publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he hopes the paper goes out of business. The paper was not pleased. Reid later said he was kidding.

* Betsy McCaughey continues to be poison for the public discourse.

* Chris Wallace isn't even pretending to be anything but a torture apologist.

* I'm not at all pleased to see Disney is buying Marvel.

* How ugly has it become for conservative activists fighting against health care reform? When Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) hosted a town-hall meeting and requested 10 seconds of silence out of respect for Sen. Ted Kennedy's death, some of the conservatives shouted through it. Classy.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

DRAWING THE LINE.... A radical political website called WorldNetDaily is known for its bizarre commentary on current events, and its latest "story," pushed by Jerome Corsi, is that the Obama administration is considering Nazi-like concentration camps for dissidents.

Jon Henke, a prominent conservative blogger and Republican strategist, has seen enough.

In the 1960's, William F. Buckley denounced the John Birch Society leadership for being "so far removed from common sense" and later said "We cannot allow the emblem of irresponsibility to attach to the conservative banner."

The Birthers are the Birchers of our time, and WorldNetDaily is their pamphlet. The Right has mostly ignored these embarrassing people and organizations, but some people and organizations inexplicably choose to support WND through advertising and email list rental or other collaboration.... No respectable organization should support the kind of fringe idiocy that WND peddles. Those who do are not respectable.

I think it's time to find out what conservative/libertarian organizations support WND through advertising, list rental or other commercial collaboration (email me if you know of any), and boycott any of those organizations that will not renounce any further support for WorldNetDaily.

Good for Jon Henke. The more prominent conservatives say "Enough" to fringe trash, the better it will be for the political discourse and the American mainstream.

There is, however, a small catch. Henke argues that those who advertise on WorldNetDaily shouldn't be considered "respectable," and deserve to be boycotted. That's an entirely defensible position, but the Republican National Committee is one of the entities that does business with WorldNetDaily. Indeed, they partnered on a mailing as recently as last week.

Perhaps Henke's call will encourage the RNC to reconsider its relationship with "fringe idiocy"?

BECK SEES A 'COUP'.... It's certainly possible that Glenn Beck doesn't know what the word "coup" means. The poor guy does, after all, think "oligarhy" is a word.

In fact, confusion over the meaning of the word might actually make Beck's wild-eyed rants less incoherent. "Coup d'etat" is, after all, of French origins, and Beck probably hates the French enough to use their idioms incorrectly.

Nevertheless, Beck today told listeners of his radio show that President Obama is seizing power as part of a "coup." As the self-described "rodeo clown" insisted on the air, there is "a revolution going on, and it is coming." Beck believes "they" believe "they can get away with it quietly." He didn't identify who "they" are, but it's probably safe to assume it has something to do with ACORN. He doesn't like ACORN.

The "revolution" that "they" hope to launch may work, Beck said, because "they are so far ahead of us." He lamented, "Most of America doesn't have a clue as to what's going on." So true, so true.

Beck was kind enough to fill us in: "There is a stealing of America, and the way it is done, it has been done through the -- the guise of an election, but they lied to us the entire time. Some of us knew! Some of us we're shouting out, you were: 'This guy's a Marxist!' 'No, no, no, no, no, no. And they're gonna say, 'We did it democratically,' and they are going to grab power every way they can. And God help us in an emergency."

I'm still not quite sure what it is the administration has done that has Beck on the verge of hysteria. Chances are, he doesn't remember, either.

ENZI GIVES UP ON GOOD-FAITH TALKS; WHITE HOUSE NOTICES.... Let no one say the White House was impatient. Republican Sen. Mike Enzi, ostensibly a member of the Finance Committee's farcical Gang of Six, kept trashing health care reform. President Obama and other Democratic leaders kept pretending Enzi was negotiating in good faith, reality notwithstanding.

This weekend, however, Enzi delivered the Republicans' weekly address, and he went too far. Enzi denounced the Democratic reform proposals, using painfully dishonest rhetoric, and even lending credence to the "death panel" garbage. It was an ugly display for anyone, but that the scripted remarks came from a Gang of Six member made Enzi's diatribe particularly ridiculous.

Apparently, the White House has seen and heard enough. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters today that Enzi obviously is no longer committed to the process that the senator has been involved with for months.

"It appears that at least in Senator Enzi's case, he doesn't believe there's a pathway to get bipartisan support, and the president thinks that's wrong," Gibbs said. "I think Senator Enzi's clearly turned over his cards on bipartisanship and decided that it's time to walk away from the table."

Gibbs added, "The president is firmly committed to working with Democrats, Republicans, independents, anybody that wants to see progress on health care reform." That group, at long last, no longer seems to include Mike Enzi.

His role in the process won't be missed. The idea of including Enzi in the talks in the first place never made any sense. Krugman recently noted that negotiating with Enzi on reform is "the quest for bipartisanship gone stark raving mad."

If that quest is over, and I sincerely hope it is, it's a very positive development. The less Enzi is involved in the process, the better the chances of a quality bill becoming law.

BARTON VOWS REFORM REPEAL.... It's hollow bravado, but it's nevertheless interesting hollow bravado. (Faiz Shakir has the video.)

The health bill is "dead on arrival" in Congress, said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce committee, said during an interview on Fox News.

"If they somehow manage to get the votes and get enough Democrats to walk the plank and commit suicide, in the next Congress, I'll be chairman Joe Barton of the Energy and Commerce committee, and we'll repeal it," Barton said.

The far-right congressman from ExxonMobil added that passing reform would push Democrats into the "political wilderness."

As a practical matter, Barton is clearly getting ahead of himself. If health care reform passes, and if voters disapprove, and if there's an enormous Republican surge and the GOP reclaims the House majority, then Barton would help repeal the historic legislation.

Unless Barton also has a plan to elect a Republican president in 2010 -- two years ahead of the next presidential election -- this vow won't amount to much no matter how many seats the GOP gains.

That said, it's a possible hint of what's to come. If Dems can get their act together -- by no means a foregone conclusion -- next year, expect to see some Republican candidates positioning themselves as leading opponents of consumer protections and coverage for the insured. "Vote GOP," they'll say, "for the return of the health care system that wasn't working."

MODERATES.... Bruce Bartlett, who has a habit of writing brilliant emails that get published elsewhere, shared some very interesting thoughts with David Frum the other day on why he no longer wants anything to do with the Republican Party. I intend to talk about the piece in more detail later, but something James Joyner said in response to the item caught my eye.

Bartlett argued, persuasively, that the modern GOP no longer welcomes moderates into positions of party leadership. Joyner considers it a problem for both parties, not one.

It's true that moderates have largely been driven from the leadership ranks of the Republican Party. But they've also been driven from the leadership ranks of the Democratic Party. The combination of gerrymandered districts and the permanent campaign have incentivized polarization.

I disagree. The leadership ranks of the Democratic Party have plenty of moderates. Comparing the two, the centrist-count isn't even close.

In the Senate, the Majority Leader is Harry Reid, a pro-life moderate from a traditionally "red" state. While the Majority Whip is Dick Durbin, whom I consider to be a solid progressive, there are four Deputy Whips including two clear moderates: Tom Carper and Bill Nelson.

Elsewhere in the Senate, Max Baucus is the Senate Finance Committee chairman, and he's moderate. Kent Conrad is the Budget Committee Chairman, and he's a moderate. Hell, Dems made Joe Lieberman the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, even though he's not a Democrat and even after he spent the last couple of years attacking Barack Obama.

Admittedly, the House Democratic leadership is more reliably liberal, but it's worth emphasizing that when it came time to choose the House Majority Leader, the job went to Steny Hoyer, who is clearly not from the party's progressive wing.

For that matter, I'd argue that both Barack Obama and Joe Biden embrace a generally-progressive agenda, but neither are Dems I'd call "liberals."

I can appreciate the fact that a word like "moderate" is somewhat subjective. One person's centrist is another person's idea of an American Fidel Castro.

But I think a fair assessment of the parties' leadership shows a qualitative difference. Is there any way in the world the Senate Republican caucus would make a pro-choice moderate from a traditionally "blue" state the Senate Majority Leader? Of course not; the idea is almost laughable.

One party not only tolerates moderates, it elevates them to leadership posts. One party doesn't.

THE FAMILIAR TALE OF WILLIAM A. WIRT.... The LA Times' Michael Hiltzik had a terrific item yesterday on a footnote of history named William A. Wirt, who garnered some notoriety in 1934. His claim to fame? Wirt claimed he had "discovered" evidence of a plot within FDR's administration to launch a Bolshevik takeover of the United States.

As silly as this was, this was an era when Roosevelt's New Deal was blasted by the Teabaggers of the day as radical socialism. With that in mind, Wirt became a Republican cause celebre for a while, hooking up with right-wing astroturf groups of the day, garnering all kind of media attention, and even testifying before Congress about his evidence of a "concrete plan" for the overthrow of the U.S. government crafted by members of FDR's "Brain Trusters."

"Roosevelt is only the Kerensky of this revolution," he quoted them. (Kerensky was the provisional leader of Russia just before the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.) The hoodwinked president would be permitted to stay in office, they said, "until we are ready to supplant him with a Stalin."

Those words caused an immediate sensation. Wirt hedged on naming the treasonous "Brain Trusters" -- which only intensified the public mania. Into the vacuum of information poured supposition masquerading as fact (certainly a familiar phenomenon today).

Wirt's provocative tale soon after fell apart; his "evidence" crumbled; and Republican leaders decided they didn't want anything to do with the guy. He quickly vanished from the public spotlight.

And that, of course, highlights a difference between then and now. William A. Wirt sounds quite a bit like Glenn Beck, Betsy McCaughey, Dick Armey, and assorted other right-wing personalities that litter the American landscape in the 21st century, spreading nonsense. Indeed, they're spreading almost identical nonsense, claiming to have evidence of President Obama launching a nefarious Nazi/Soviet/Marxist/Illuminati scheme.

But when their tales fall apart, there are no consequences.

Indeed, the main reason not to chuckle condescendingly at Wirt is the thought of what might happen were he to walk the Earth today.

Rather than being disowned in embarrassment, he'd be lionized as a purveyor of an alternate truth -- "Bill the teacher," perhaps -- given a gig on cable news and touted as a presidential contender for 2012. He'd have a blog, a Facebook page and a Twitter account.

In today's world, the more outlandish his accusations the better. For while America has made great strides since 1934 in science, civil rights and many other fields, our ability to recognize humbug for what it is seems to have gotten much, much worse.

Well said.

BRADLEY EYES 'GRAND BIPARTISAN COMPROMISE'.... Former senator and presidential candidate Bill Bradley believes "a grand bipartisan compromise is still possible with health care." Dems want universal health coverage; Republicans limits on lawsuits. As Bradley sees it, the "trade-off" is "obvious." If policymakers "combine universal coverage with malpractice tort reform in health care," both sides can come away with something they want.

When Bradley calls this "obvious," he's right. In fact, he's not the first one to come up with this -- last week the Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein presented his own compromise plan, which included "malpractice reform."

Now, Jonathan Zasloff makes the case that Republicans wouldn't accept this because, for all of their bluster, they're not really serious about "malpractice tort reform" anyway. It's a compelling point.

But there's another angle I can't quite get around: Republicans aren't asking for malpractice tort reform in exchange for support of health care reform. Indeed, they're not asking for anything.

If there were any Republicans, even one, saying, "If Dems were willing to drop the public option and add tort reform to the mix, the health bill would have plenty of support," then Bradley's argument would make a lot of sense. But that's not what we're dealing with.

There's a point a whole lot of well-intentioned people seem to miss, so let's repeat the magic six words once again: Republicans don't support health care reform. They're not looking for a deal, or concessions, or enticements. They're looking to kill the bill and capitalize on its failure. Period.

Indeed, GOP leaders aren't even pretending otherwise. Remember, when the White House signaled a willingness to scrap the public option, not one GOP lawmaker -- literally, not one -- responded by saying, "Well, if Obama is willing to drop the public option, we're ready to find some common ground." On the contrary, Republicans shot down the trial balloon by insisting no concessions would be enough -- the GOP will oppose reform no matter what.

It's so bad, Paul Krugman is longing for the days of Nixon.

[T]he Nixon era was a time in which leading figures in both parties were capable of speaking rationally about policy, and in which policy decisions weren't as warped by corporate cash as they are now. America is a better country in many ways than it was 35 years ago, but our political system's ability to deal with real problems has been degraded to such an extent that I sometimes wonder whether the country is still governable. [...]

So what happened to the days when a Republican president could sound so nonideological, and offer such a reasonable proposal?

Part of the answer is that the right-wing fringe, which has always been around -- as an article by the historian Rick Perlstein puts it, "crazy is a pre-existing condition" -- has now, in effect, taken over one of our two major parties. Moderate Republicans, the sort of people with whom one might have been able to negotiate a health care deal, have either been driven out of the party or intimidated into silence.

To reiterate a point from last week, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid could hold a press conference today, offering a reform package with no public option, no tax increases on the middle class, no "death panels" or "death books," no funding for abortion, no coverage of undocumented immigrants, no rationing, no additional debt, and some "malpractice reform" thrown in, and Republicans would immediately respond with, "It's not good enough."

Why? Because they don't support health care reform.

PUTTING PRESSURE ON GRASSLEY.... To hear Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) tell it, he has no choice but to move away from health care reform because, he says, that's what Iowans have been telling him to do. "If town meetings are going to mean anything, if democracy is going to mean anything, then you listen to your people and you act accordingly," he said late last week.

This week, if Grassley turns on his television, he'll listen to someone else. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America are launching a new ad this week, encouraging the conservative Iowan senator to not only support reform, but also to back a public option.

The groups couldn't have found a better person for the ad. Instead of an outsider, the pro-reform message comes from Kevin Shilling of Greenfield, Iowa, who explains from the outset that he "voted for Reagan, Nixon, George W. Bush and Senator Chuck Grassley too." He's also a 24-year veteran of the U.S. Army who says Iowans of both parties "want the public insurance option."

"I voted for Senator Grassley in the past," Shilling adds. "But when Grassley takes over $2 million from the big health and insurance industries that oppose reform and then says he won't give Iowans the choice of a public option, I have to ask: Senator, whose side are you on?"

The ad is slated to run 200 times in four Iowa markets and 100 times in DC this week, though DFA and the PCCC hope to keep it going longer.

It's bound to get Grassley's attention. Whether it changes his attitude is another matter. The senator made it overwhelmingly clear last week that he's inclined to listen to loud protestors precisely because they're loud protestors. Chances are, Kevin Shilling will be easier for him to overlook.

When Grassley says he feels compelled to "listen to his people," he means people who'll give him an excuse to do what he wants to do anyway.

MONDAY'S CAMPAIGN ROUND-UP....Today's installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn't generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers.

* Who'll run to fill the Senate vacancy left by Ted Kennedy? Some of his Senate colleagues believe his widow, Vicky, deserves serious consideration.

* On a related note, former Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II (D-Mass.) is also very much a part of the mix.

* Last week, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) picked his former chief of staff, George Lemieux, to serve in the Senate through the end of next year. The selection isn't going over especially well.

* Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) bid for a full term is likely to get a little more complicated if/when former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff challenges the appointed senator in a Democratic primary.

* I haven't seen anything about the methodology, but the Alabama Education Association has a poll showing Rep. Artur Davis (D) leading his likely Republican opponents in next year's gubernatorial race.

* Confirming earlier reports, Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) announced late last week that he will not take on Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) next year. Braley will, however, seek re-election to the House.

* And while the Republicans' 2012 presidential field remains very much in flux, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) isn't even thinking about it. "I wouldn't get out of my driveway without my wife shooting me in the back," DeMint said.

HOW TO AVOID AN ELECTORAL CATASTROPHE.... It seems more than a little premature to start thinking seriously about win-loss ratios in the midterm elections. They're 14 months away, and no one has any idea what the national landscape will look like a year from now.

That said, if modern political history is any guide, it stands to reason that Democrats will lose some seats in Congress in the 2010 elections. A Politico piece today ponders what's realistic in terms of Republican gains.

After an August recess marked by raucous town halls, troubling polling data and widespread anecdotal evidence of a volatile electorate, the small universe of political analysts who closely follow House races is predicting moderate to heavy Democratic losses in 2010.

Some of the most prominent and respected handicappers can now envision an election in which Democrats suffer double-digit losses in the House -- not enough to provide the 40 seats necessary to return the GOP to power but enough to put them within striking distance.

Charlie Cook is talking about a 20-seat gain for the GOP in the House. Democratic officials expect the number to be around 10. David Wasserman puts the number between nine and 26. Nate Silver believes it could be anywhere from 20 to 50. Stuart Rothenberg thinks Republicans should "very happy" with a net gain of 12 to 15 seats.

All of this is subject to change, of course, because it's still very early. And for all the talk about 1994 redux, there are several reasons -- regional realignment, retirements -- that won't exist in 2010.

Not surprisingly, the result of the fight over health care reform will make a very big difference, and if Dem strategists are thinking about how to improve their chances, the reform fight offers a pretty big hint. Three words: motivate the base.

For all the talk in the Senate about scaling back reform, making the bill weaker, less effective, and less generous to middle class families, there's ample evidence that will only make matters far worse for Democratic candidates 14 months from now. Motivated conservatives will be furious either way, because even trying to bring about some reform has been deemed outrageous. The question is whether lawmakers will give progressive voters an incentive to head to the polls.

The political danger is not just that a failure on health-care reform will anger the electorate. It will also change the composition of the electorate. Dispirited Democrats will stay home. Energized Republicans will press their advantage. Add in that the wave of young voters who were energized by Obama's campaign probably aren't going to turn out for the midterm election anyway, and you're looking at a pretty unfriendly landscape.

That's why the midterms are dangerous for Democrats. Losing on health care and collapsing into recriminations and internal divisions pretty much guarantees that Democratic voters of all sorts are turned off. You don't just win elections by being popular. You win elections by making sure that the people who like you turn out to vote.

Voters who may be inclined to vote Democratic will need a reason. Policymakers need to give them one.

TIME FOR THE NARRATIVE TO SWITCH BACK.... In June, health care reform was very likely to happen. It was one of those observations "everyone" knew to be true. In July, however, reform was in trouble, and "everyone" knew that, too. It's August, and now reform is practically dead. "Everyone" says so.

Of course, August is almost over, and those observations about the reform effort failing have become stale and uninteresting. September starts tomorrow and it's time for a new narrative. Maybe now would be a good time for "everyone" to start talking about reform is going to pass after all.

The NYT's John Harwood has a piece today on the "stronger prospects" for a health care reform bill this year.

If sentiment ever ruled the United States Senate, it does not now. Advocates of health care overhaul should not expect a big boost in memory of Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

Yet other factors suggest that President Obama still has stronger prospects for achieving his health policy goals than surface impressions of the Congressional recess indicate. He lags behind his own timetable for action, but remains ahead of presidential predecessors who pursued the same objective.

As Harwood sees it, there's already widespread agreement on several key elements of reform; reconciliation is still very much an option; the Gang of Six nonsense is nearly complete; and "Democratic leaders believe" they might be able to break a filibuster with Sen. Olympia Snowe's (R-Maine) support.

Former Sen. John Breaux (D) of Louisiana told Harwood, "They'll get something done. It'll be a major step."

E.J. Dionne Jr. touched on a similar point in his column today: "Despite health care's summer of discontent, supporters of change are in better shape than the accounts of recent weeks would suggest."

And Kevin Drum emphasized the fact that as August comes to a close, the Tea Baggers and their tantrums haven't fundamentally changed much of anything: "[T]he Fox/FreedomWorks crowd has created some great political theater, but underneath it all not a lot has changed. If Democrats can just take a deep breath after the trauma of being yelled at all summer, they'll realize that the loons at their townhalls represented about one percent of their constituency; that the public still wants reform and will reward success; that the plans currently on the table are already pretty modest affairs; and then they'll stick together as a caucus and vote for them. And that will be that."

Health care reform could be the phoenix, rising from the ashes, if Democrats show some spine and roll up their sleeves. The elements are already in place, and the media narrative is ready to shift. It's not rocket science.

BACKPEDALING JUST AS FAST AS HE CAN.... Tom Ridge, Bush's first Secretary of Homeland Security, certainly caused a ruckus two weeks ago when he confirmed what many of us assumed to be true -- the Bush administration based terrorist threat levels on political considerations.

As for the former DHS chief explained, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld pressured him to raise the threat level on the eve of the 2004 election, without strong evidence to do so. In his book, Ridge called it a "dramatic and inconceivable" event that "proved most troublesome" and reinforced his decision to resign from the administration after the election.

"There was absolutely no support for that position [raising the threat level] within our department. None," he writes. "I wondered, 'Is this about security or politics?' Post-election analysis demonstrated a significant increase in the president's approval rating in the days after the raising of the threat level."

Now, Ridge is walking the whole provocative idea back.

Former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge, speaking for the first time about accusations made in his new book, says he did not mean to suggest that other top Bush administration officials were playing politics with the nation's security before the 2004 presidential election.

"I'm not second-guessing my colleagues," Ridge said in an interview about The Test of Our Times, which comes out Tuesday and recounts his experiences as head of the nation's homeland security efforts in the first several years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. [...]

Now, Ridge says he did not mean to suggest he was pressured to raise the threat level, and he is not accusing anyone of trying to boost Bush in the polls. "I was never pressured," Ridge said.

No, of course not. Why would we get that idea?

Probably because Ridge has been saying it for years. As far back as 2005, Ridge acknowledged that the Bush administration periodically put the United States on high alert for terrorist attacks based on flimsy evidence. "There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we [at the Department of Homeland Security] said, 'For that?'" Ridge told reporters.

Indeed, two weeks ago, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld leaned on Ridge hard enough that it contributed to his resignation. Now he wants us to know he was "never pressured."

It's literally unbelievable.

MCDONNELL'S THESIS IN VIRGINIA.... For most of the year, Democrats in Virginia have hoped to characterize former state Attorney General Bob McDonnell, the Republican gubernatorial hopeful, as far more extreme in his ideology than he lets on. Dems haven't had much luck, though, and McDonnell leads in all available polls.

With about two months left until Election Day, the Democrats' efforts just got a little easier.

At age 34, two years before his first election and two decades before he would run for governor of Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell submitted a master's thesis to the evangelical school he was attending in Virginia Beach in which he described working women and feminists as "detrimental" to the family. He said government policy should favor married couples over "cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators." He described as "illogical" a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples. [...]

In his run for governor, McDonnell, 55, makes little mention of his conservative beliefs and has said throughout his campaign that he should be judged by what he has done in office, including efforts to lower taxes, stiffen criminal penalties and reform mental health laws. He reiterated that position Saturday in a statement responding to questions about his thesis.

McDonnell's master's thesis ran 93 pages, and was part of his post-grad work at Regent University -- an evangelical school in Virginia created by radical televangelist Pat Robertson. The paper went on to call for undermining the concept of church-state separation, public funding for private schools, and protections for parents who spank their children.

Now, in general, I'm inclined to cut candidates quite a bit of slack on the work they did as students. I don't doubt that when I was in grad school at age 22, I wrote some papers that I'd disagree with now, and I wouldn't want it to be held against me. McDonnell wrote some pretty radical stuff, but it was 20 years ago.

But the circumstances with McDonnell are a little different. For one thing, he was 34 when he wrote, among other things, that working women and feminists are "detrimental" to American families. It's harder to dismiss bizarre ideas as a youthful flight of fancy when the author is 34 years old.

More importantly, though, this was not just an academic exercise for a student at a TV preacher's college. McDonnell's thesis included a 15-point action plan he wanted to see Republicans follow. Soon after, McDonnell was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, where he "pursued at least 10 of the policy goals he laid out in that research paper."

Responding to questions about the thesis, McDonnell said his "views on many issues have changed" as he's "gotten older." He added that his criticism of women in the workplace "does not reflect my views."

That's the right response, I suppose, but given how offensive the paper was, it may require some further explanation. As for the larger campaign dynamic, Dems have been waiting for a chance to characterize McDonnell as part of the Robertson/Falwell wing of the GOP. Watch to see how aggressively they take advantage of this opportunity.

Postscript: By the way, did Democratic opposition researchers dig up this dirt on McDonnell? Nope -- the WaPo learned about the thesis when McDonnell brought it up during a recent interview.

HURTING DICK CHENEY'S FEELINGS.... Dick Cheney offered quite a bit of nonsense on Fox News yesterday, but perhaps the most entertaining thing was hearing him talk about how the Obama White House has hurt his feelings. Apparently, the current president was supposed to seek out the former vice president for advice on national security matters.

"I guess the other thing that offends the hell out of me, frankly, Chris, is we had a track record now of eight years of defending the nation against any further mass casualty attacks from Al Qaeda. The approach of the Obama administration should be to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, 'How did you do it? What were the keys to keeping this country safe over that period of time?'"

Got that? What Obama really ought to do, according to Dick Cheney, is seek out the former vice president's advice and follow it. After all, Cheney believes he's proven himself on the issue.

I seem to recall the Bush/Cheney era a little differently. Cheney thinks it was a sterling success when it came to national security and counter-terrorism. Perhaps there's something to this. After all, except for the catastrophic events of 9/11, and the anthrax attacks against Americans, and terrorist attacks against U.S. allies, and the terrorist attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Bush's inability to capture those responsible for 9/11, and waging an unnecessary war that inspired more terrorists, and the success terrorists had in exploiting Bush's international unpopularity, the Bush/Cheney record on counter-terrorism was awesome.

After the previous administration established a record like that, President Obama didn't ask Cheney for tips? The nerve.

I am curious about something, though. Terrorists first attacked the World Trade Center in 1993, early on in President Clinton's first year in office. Six people were killed, hundreds more were injured. The Clinton administration caught those responsible, subjected them to the U.S. criminal justice system, and foreign terrorists did not strike again on U.S. soil during Clinton's terms in office.

So, at any point in 2001, did the Bush White House turn to Bill Clinton and Al Gore and ask, "How did you do it? What were the keys to keeping this country safe over that period of time?" I think we can probably guess the answer.

For that matter, did Al Gore find a sympathetic media personality in order to complain about how it "offends the hell" out of him that Bush/Cheney didn't seek the previous administration's guidance? After all, Clinton/Gore had a track record of eight years of defending the nation against any further attacks from foreign terrorists. The approach of the Bush/Cheney administration should have been to go to those people who were involved in that policy, right?

MORAL RELATIVISM, CONSERVATIVE STYLE.... Mid-way through the "Fox News Sunday" interview, host Chris Wallace asked Dick Cheney if he's comfortable with intelligence officials exceeding "legal authorization" to try to obtain information from a detainee. The former vice president said, "I am."

And that, in a nutshell, is all one really needs to know about Dick Cheney. The law should be followed, except when it shouldn't. And when the law isn't followed, the only real outrage would be an effort to hold alleged criminals responsible for their conduct. Think conservatism is about moral absolutes, and stark lines separating right from wrong? Think again.

Michael Scherer noted, "There is not much nuance there.... One CIA contractor, according to the CIA Inspector General, is alleged to have beaten an Afghan detainee to death with a large metal flashlight and his foot. Released criminal records show that another CIA employee was interrogating a detainee at Abu Ghraib prison in a stress position with a bag over his head, when the detainee died of asphyxiation. Assuming that Cheney did not misspeak, his statement to Wallace suggests that he believes these deaths are "OK' given the circumstances."

Asked, in the same interview, whether he would cooperate if sought out by federal investigators conducting a criminal investigation, Cheney said, "It will depend on the circumstances." (The former vice president may refuse to cooperate with the Justice Department?) Cheney also argued that the attorney general is a "political appointee," who should base prosecutorial decisions on the political wishes of the president. Seriously.

Aside from Cheney's crass partisanship and craven support for torture, why is he constantly in the public eye, making this case? I think publius had a good item on this.

To me, the goal of his recent charm offensive is simply to kick up enough dirt to force a "draw." That is, he wants to politicize the torture debate as much as possible -- to transform a profound debate about our country's values into just another everyday Republican/Democratic partisan squabble that makes people throw up their hands and despair of knowing "the truth."

If you've noticed, Cheney tends to pop up in the aftermath of damning evidence. We just (re)learned, for instance, that our CIA agents murdered detainees, choked them, and threatened to rape their wives. Normally, you would think these revelations would give pause to even the most ardent Cheney supporters.

But then Cheney comes along, and tries to reframe the whole story. His intended audience isn't the nation as a whole, but conservatives. He wants to make sure that they view these stories through partisan-tinted lenses. [...]

In short, Cheney wants to transform what should a broad consensus against torture into a "he said/she said" partisan squabble. And if most conservative blogs are any guide, he's probably been successful.

One last thought. Early on in the interview, Cheney insisted that the Justice Department's interest in illegal interrogation tactics is "clearly a political move." The former VP added, "I mean, there's no other rationale for why they're doing this."

"No other rationale"? How about the existence of evidence of criminal wrongdoing, brought to the attention of the Justice Department? Isn't that a "rationale" for a prosecutor?

I honestly don't get the "political move" argument. Indeed, it seems backwards. If Eric Holder had decided to go pursue Cheney, Yoo, Bybee, Addington, Gonzales, it'd be easier to understand the complaints. They'd be wrong, but the allegations would at least be coherent. In this case, though, the "political move" would be to ignore alleged crimes for the sake of political expedience.

MOTIVATED REASONING.... To paraphrase Twain, right-wing health care talking points can travel the nation, while the truth is still getting its pants on. If the most frustrating aspect of the policy debate is the willingness of reform opponents to make stuff up, the most dejecting is the willingness of gullible people to believe nonsense.

And believe it they do. Just a couple of weeks ago, an NBC News poll found that most Americans have already come to believe a wide variety of transparently false claims, all of which have been pushed aggressively by the right.

Of particular interest, though, are those who are confronted with reality, but prefer to believe lies anyway. There's widespread confusion, to be sure, but there's also a large group who deliberately embrace the lies they've been told. Newsweek's Sharon Begley, for example, recently wrote a piece scrutinizing reform myths. She found, not surprisingly, that a wide variety of right-wing allegations are without foundation in fact.

For her trouble, Begley was blasted by conservatives for, ironically enough, having "lost touch with reality." Some far-right Newsweek readers even wished her dead for daring to write a piece that debunked claims they preferred to believe were true.

In a follow-up piece, Begley considers the thinking behind this bizarre trend. She spoke to sociologist Steven Hoffman who explained, "Rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe." For the most part, he added, "people completely ignore contrary information" and are able to "develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information."

Which brings us back to health-care reform -- in particular, the apoplexy at town-hall meetings and the effectiveness of the lies being spread about health-care reform proposals. First of all, let's remember that 59,934,814 voters cast their ballot for John McCain, so we can assume that tens of millions of Americans believe the wrong guy is in the White House. To justify that belief, they need to find evidence that he's leading the country astray. What better evidence of that than to seize on the misinformation about Obama's health-care reform ideas and believe that he wants to insure illegal aliens, for example, and give the Feds electronic access to doctors' bank accounts?

Obama's opponents also need to find evidence that their reading of him back in November was correct. They therefore seize on "confirmation" that he wants to, for instance, redistribute the wealth, as in his "spread the wealth around" remark to Joe the Plumber -- finding such confirmation in the claims that health-care reform will do just that, redistributing health care from those who have it now to the 46 million currently uninsured. Similarly, they seize on anything that confirms the "socialist" label that got pinned on Obama during the campaign, or the pro-abortion label -- anything to comfort themselves that they made the right choice last November.

There are legitimate, fact-based reasons to oppose health-care reform. But some of the loudest opposition is the result of confirmatory bias, cognitive dissonance, and other examples of mental processes that have gone off the rails.

Of course, it's difficult to explain this to the enraged conservatives who are convinced that health care reform would destroy civilization. They like their delusions, thank you very much, and prefer that reality be kept at arm's length.

As for what to do about it, I'm open to suggestion. Ignorance seems to be spreading like a virus, which makes the discourse stupid and constructive debate nearly impossible.

MCCAIN ON THE TEEVEE.... When I saw that John McCain was going to be on "Face the Nation," I assumed it was simply to reflect on Ted Kennedy's legacy in the Senate. It wasn't.

Both Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Diane Feinstein (D-Calif) emphasized on Face the Nation this morning that the Attorney General's new probe into the Central Intelligence Agency's interrogation techniques is ill-timed and counter-productive.

Speaking first with host Bob Schieffer, McCain agreed with remarks made earlier in the day by former Vice President Dick Cheney, who told Fox News Sunday that the interrogation probe was a "terrible decision."

It's a very weak argument, but it nevertheless offers us another chance to ask why John McCain is making yet another Sunday morning show appearance.

For those keeping score at home, this is McCain's 12th Sunday morning appearance since President Obama's inauguration in January. That's 32 Sundays, for an average of a McCain appearance every 2.6 weeks.

Since the president took office, McCain has been on "Meet the Press" twice (July 12 and March 29), "Face the Nation" three times (August 30, April 26, and February 8), CNN's "State of the Union" twice (August 2 and February 15), "Fox News Sunday" three times (July 2, March 8, and January 25), and "This Week" twice (August 23 and May 10).

Now, this might be easier to understand if McCain played a key role in public policy right now, but he doesn't. He's just another conservative member of a 40-seat minority. McCain isn't playing a role in any important negotiations; he hasn't unveiled any significant pieces of legislation; he isn't being targeted as a swing vote on any major bills; and he's not a member of the GOP leadership. He's just another far-right senator, with precious little to say that couldn't have been predicted in advance.

Oh, and incidentally, he lost the last presidential election by a fairly wide margin. Nevertheless, McCain has still made 12 appearances in eight months.

Eric Boehlert recently checked and found that John Kerry, in the eight months after Bush's second inaugural, made three appearances on the Sunday morning shows. McCain's total, obviously, quadruples that number.

As Boehlert concluded, "[A]fter Kerry lost in November, the press walked away from him. After McCain lost in November, the press still crowds around him."

WAPO OMBUDSMAN POINTS TO 'MISSING INGREDIENT'.... It's a familiar problem. During a presidential campaign, reporters covering the candidates will invariably cover the horse race and ignore the substance. If a campaign unveils a national security policy, for example, coverage will focus on "what it means" -- whether the policy will position the candidate as "tough," whether it addresses a problem that's emerged in the polls, etc. -- not whether the policy is any good.

Andrew Alexander, the Washington Post's ombudsman, noted the same problem with coverage of the health care debate. He pointed to some quality journalism on the subject, before conceding the larger trend. Readers, Alexander explained, "want primers, not prognostications. And they're craving stories on what it means for ordinary folks and their families."

In my examination of roughly 80 A-section stories on health-care reform since July 1, all but about a dozen focused on political maneuvering or protests. The Pew Foundation's Project for Excellence in Journalism had a similar finding. Its recent month-long review of Post front pages found 72 percent of health-care stories were about politics, process or protests.

"The politics has been covered, but all of this is flying totally over the heads of people," said Trudy Lieberman, a contributing editor to Columbia Journalism Review, who has been tracking coverage by The Post and other news organizations. "They have not known from Day One what this was about."

It's not for lack of interest. About 45 percent of Americans surveyed by the Pew Research Center for People & the Press recently said they have been following the health-care story more closely than any other.

But nearly half of those surveyed this month in a nationwide poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation said they are "confused" about reform plans.

Kaiser's president and CEO, Drew Altman, worries that the media have devoted too much attention to "accusation and refutation" stories instead of focusing on the "core questions about health-care reform that the public wants answered."

By "gravitating toward controversies" such as the recent boisterous town hall meetings on health care, he said, the media may "unwittingly" be allowing coverage to be shaped by evocative rhetoric and images.

I'm not sure if "unwittingly" is the right word here. For the media in general, I think there's a reliance on horse-race and he-said-she-said journalism because it's easy -- and because all of their colleagues and competitors are doing the same thing.

It leads to a superficiality that contributes to public confusion.

AND THEN WHAT?.... On ABC's "This Week," it appears the question of the day is WWKD -- what would Kennedy do?

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) told ABC's This Week that the late-Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) -- who long supported the public option -- would compromise on health care before altogether abandoning the possibility for reform this year.

"Teddy would put the facts on the table, and the reality of life for many Americans on the table," Kerry told host George Stephanopoulos. "What Teddy would do is fight for the public option. He believed that the public option, like I do, would be the best option available ... But if he didn't see the ability to get it done ... he would not throw the baby out with the bathwater, he would not say no to anything."

"In every case he fought as hard as he could," Hatch added. "But when he recognized that he couldn't get everything he wanted, but could get a good bill, he [would compromise]."

I have no idea if this is true. I do know that "public, government-run health care was key to not one, but both of Kennedy's final health care initiatives." He helped shape the HELP Committee bill, which included a public option as its centerpiece. Kennedy also championed a Medicare for All bill, which never gained traction.

Given this, whether Kennedy would have been willing to scuttle a public option -- despite majority support among Americans, majority support in the House, and majority support in the Senate -- is open to some debate.

But I still think this is the wrong question, and it ignores the larger dynamic entirely.

I can imagine a set of circumstances in which Senate Republicans said, "Look, reform is important, but the public option is a bridge too far. If Dems were willing to drop that provision, we could have a broad, bipartisan consensus on a health care bill." But, newsflash, this isn't what's happening. Indeed, when the White House signaled a willingness to scuttle the public option, congressional Republicans insisted they'd still oppose health care reform.

Kerry and Hatch think Kennedy would have dropped the public plan to strike a deal. Maybe, maybe not. But the question badly misses the point -- what deal? Which Republicans are ready to support an ambitious reform package if Democrats agree to drop the public option?

The GOP expects Dems to get rid of one of the key provisions in the entire reform campaign. In exchange for what? Why is there even a discussion underway in which Dems negotiate with no one, giving up long-sought policies and get literally nothing in return?

We're hearing an awful lot about the "quid," with no talk about the "quo."

BEATS ME.... Kevin Drum recommends we take a moment to get "back to basics."

Let's recap: the United States spends about twice as much on healthcare as any other developed nation in the world and in return receives just about the worst care. Can someone remind me again why there's even a debate about whether we should put up with this?

Reading this, it reminded me just how challenging the right's sales pitch was going into the debate over reform. In some ways, conservatives couldn't possibly win the argument -- the status quo is ridiculous. We spend too much and get too little. Tens of millions of Americans go without coverage, and thousands die as a result of not having insurance. The existing private system screws over consumers, is a drag on the economy, and undercuts wage growth. The two groups of Americans best served by the status quo are seniors (in a Canadian-style, socialized system) and veterans (in a British-style, government-run system). Everyone else is in, at best, a precarious position.

Left unchecked, the dysfunctional, inefficient, patchwork health care system threatens to bankrupt the country. Reform was a no-brainer.

In this sense, Republicans, their allies, and their media partners had a seemingly impossible task. There are plenty of old sayings about the most effective sales professionals -- they can sell sand in the desert, they can sell ice to the Inuit, etc. The right's challenge was the opposite -- they had to tell a drowning country not to accept a life-preserver. That's an extremely difficult task.

They've pulled it off, so far, by telling almost comically-ridiculous lies, and managing to get scared, gullible people to believe them. It's no small feat. Indeed, it's almost impressive. Conservatives have managed to create a debate out of nothing but partisanship, paranoia, and greed.

If there's a Hall of Fame for political con jobs, this one's a first-ballot inductee.

MAJORITY RULE.... The New York Times has a good editorial on the debate over health care policy today, which offers a compelling overview of the lay of the land -- where we are now. Long story short, reform efforts can't garner bipartisan support, largely because GOP lawmakers have become craven. Reform efforts can't overcome Republican obstructionism, because the Democratic caucus has "only" 59 members, and some of the 59 are both antsy and panicky.

That leaves the governing party in a bind, and makes the significance of "reconciliation" paramount.

Reconciliation bills are primarily intended to deal with budget items that affect the deficit, not with substantive legislation like health care reform. Senators could challenge as "extraneous" any provisions that do not change spending or revenues over the next five years, or would have a budget impact that is "merely incidental" to some broader policy purpose, or would increase the deficit in Year 6 and beyond.

So how much of the proposed health care reforms could plausibly fit into a reconciliation bill? The answer seems to be: quite a lot, though nobody knows for sure. [...]

Nobody knows how the Senate parliamentarian, an obscure official who advises the presiding officer, would rule on any of these complicated issues. But if he were to take a narrow view and eliminate important features, it could leave the reform package riddled with holes -- perhaps providing subsidies to buy insurance on exchanges that do not exist, for example. Thus there are plans afoot to use a second bill to pass whatever reforms will not fit under the rubric of reconciliation, but those would be subject to filibuster and would have to depend on their general popularity (insurance reforms are enormously popular) to win 60 votes for passage. [...]

Clearly the reconciliation approach is a risky and less desirable way to enact comprehensive health care reforms. The only worse approach would be to retreat to modest gestures in an effort to win Republican acquiescence. It is barely possible that the Senate Finance Committee might pull off a miracle and devise a comprehensive solution that could win broad support, or get one or more Republicans to vote to break a filibuster. If not, the Democrats need to push for as much reform as possible through majority vote.

A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said two weeks ago that Reid is prepared to pass health care reform "by any legislative means necessary." Forcing the Senate to give a bill and up-or-down vote -- majority rule -- would certainly fall under this umbrella.

I can appreciate the fact that the reconciliation process was not intended to be used this way. But whenever that point comes up, my response is always the same: the filibuster rule was not intended to be used this way, either. The idea that a bill that enjoys majority support in the House and majority support in the Senate is not allowed to pass is fundamentally at odds with the American political process, and yet, it's quietly become both accepted and routine.

Health care reform deserves a vote. If most senators oppose it, the bill will fail. If most senators support it, the bill should advance. If the only way to make that happen is reconciliation, so be it.

SAYING GOODBYE TO TED KENNEDY.... As the AP reported, "President Barack Obama led the nation Saturday in mourning and remembering "the greatest legislator of our time," celebrating the indelible impact of Edward M. Kennedy as a senator for nearly a half-century and leader of America's most famous family during tragedy and triumph. Delivering an emotional, simple eulogy for Kennedy that capped a two-hour Roman Catholic funeral Mass, Obama employed humor, his own experiences and timeless anecdotes to memorialize the senator, who died Tuesday at 77 after battling brain cancer for more than a year."

Here's the first part of the president's eulogy:

And here's the second:

The full text is below.

Mrs. Kennedy, Kara, Edward, Patrick, Curran, Caroline, members of the Kennedy family, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens:

Today we say goodbye to the youngest child of Rose and Joseph Kennedy. The world will long remember their son Edward as the heir to a weighty legacy; a champion for those who had none; the soul of the Democratic Party; and the lion of the U.S. Senate - a man whose name graces nearly one thousand laws, and who penned more than three hundred himself.

But those of us who loved him, and ache with his passing, know Ted Kennedy by the other titles he held: Father. Brother. Husband. Uncle Teddy, or as he was often known to his younger nieces and nephews, "The Grand Fromage," or "The Big Cheese." I, like so many others in the city where he worked for nearly half a century, knew him as a colleague, a mentor, and above all, a friend.

Ted Kennedy was the baby of the family who became its patriarch; the restless dreamer who became its rock. He was the sunny, joyful child, who bore the brunt of his brothers' teasing, but learned quickly how to brush it off. When they tossed him off a boat because he didn't know what a jib was, six-year-old Teddy got back in and learned to sail. When a photographer asked the newly-elected Bobby to step back at a press conference because he was casting a shadow on his younger brother, Teddy quipped, "It'll be the same in Washington."

This spirit of resilience and good humor would see Ted Kennedy through more pain and tragedy than most of us will ever know. He lost two siblings by the age of sixteen. He saw two more taken violently from the country that loved them. He said goodbye to his beloved sister, Eunice, in the final days of his own life. He narrowly survived a plane crash, watched two children struggle with cancer, buried three nephews, and experienced personal failings and setbacks in the most public way possible.

It is a string of events that would have broken a lesser man. And it would have been easy for Teddy to let himself become bitter and hardened; to surrender to self-pity and regret; to retreat from public life and live out his years in peaceful quiet. No one would have blamed him for that.

But that was not Ted Kennedy. As he told us, "…[I]ndividual faults and frailties are no excuse to give in - and no exemption from the common obligation to give of ourselves." Indeed, Ted was the "Happy Warrior" that the poet William Wordsworth spoke of when he wrote:

As tempted more; more able to endure,

As more exposed to suffering and distress;

Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.

Through his own suffering, Ted Kennedy became more alive to the plight and suffering of others - the sick child who could not see a doctor; the young soldier sent to battle without armor; the citizen denied her rights because of what she looks like or who she loves or where she comes from. The landmark laws that he championed -- the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, immigration reform, children's health care, the Family and Medical Leave Act -all have a running thread. Ted Kennedy's life's work was not to champion those with wealth or power or special connections. It was to give a voice to those who were not heard; to add a rung to the ladder of opportunity; to make real the dream of our founding. He was given the gift of time that his brothers were not, and he used that gift to touch as many lives and right as many wrongs as the years would allow.

We can still hear his voice bellowing through the Senate chamber, face reddened, fist pounding the podium, a veritable force of nature, in support of health care or workers' rights or civil rights. And yet, while his causes became deeply personal, his disagreements never did. While he was seen by his fiercest critics as a partisan lightning rod, that is not the prism through which Ted Kennedy saw the world, nor was it the prism through which his colleagues saw him. He was a product of an age when the joy and nobility of politics prevented differences of party and philosophy from becoming barriers to cooperation and mutual respect - a time when adversaries still saw each other as patriots.

And that's how Ted Kennedy became the greatest legislator of our time. He did it by hewing to principle, but also by seeking compromise and common cause - not through deal-making and horse-trading alone, but through friendship, and kindness, and humor. There was the time he courted Orrin Hatch's support for the Children's Health Insurance Program by having his Chief of Staff serenade the Senator with a song Orrin had written himself; the time he delivered shamrock cookies on a china plate to sweeten up a crusty Republican colleague; and the famous story of how he won the support of a Texas Committee Chairman on an immigration bill. Teddy walked into a meeting with a plain manila envelope, and showed only the Chairman that it was filled with the Texan's favorite cigars. When the negotiations were going well, he would inch the envelope closer to the Chairman. When they weren't, he would pull it back. Before long, the deal was done.

It was only a few years ago, on St. Patrick's Day, when Teddy buttonholed me on the floor of the Senate for my support on a certain piece of legislation that was coming up for vote. I gave him my pledge, but expressed my skepticism that it would pass. But when the roll call was over, the bill garnered the votes it needed, and then some. I looked at Teddy with astonishment and asked how he had pulled it off. He just patted me on the back, and said "Luck of the Irish!"

Of course, luck had little to do with Ted Kennedy's legislative success, and he knew that. A few years ago, his father-in-law told him that he and Daniel Webster just might be the two greatest senators of all time. Without missing a beat, Teddy replied, "What did Webster do?"

But though it is Ted Kennedy's historic body of achievements we will remember, it is his giving heart that we will miss. It was the friend and colleague who was always the first to pick up the phone and say, "I'm sorry for your loss," or "I hope you feel better," or "What can I do to help?" It was the boss who was so adored by his staff that over five hundred spanning five decades showed up for his 75th birthday party. It was the man who sent birthday wishes and thank you notes and even his own paintings to so many who never imagined that a U.S. Senator would take the time to think about someone like them. I have one of those paintings in my private study - a Cape Cod seascape that was a gift to a freshman legislator who happened to admire it when Ted Kennedy welcomed him into his office the first week he arrived in Washington; by the way, that's my second favorite gift from Teddy and Vicki after our dog Bo. And it seems like everyone has one of those stories - the ones that often start with "You wouldn't believe who called me today."

Ted Kennedy was the father who looked after not only his own three children, but John's and Bobby's as well. He took them camping and taught them to sail. He laughed and danced with them at birthdays and weddings; cried and mourned with them through hardship and tragedy; and passed on that same sense of service and selflessness that his parents had instilled in him. Shortly after Ted walked Caroline down the aisle and gave her away at the altar, he received a note from Jackie that read, "On you the carefree youngest brother fell a burden a hero would have begged to be spared. We are all going to make it because you were always there with your love."

Not only did the Kennedy family make it because of Ted's love - he made it because of theirs; and especially because of the love and the life he found in Vicki. After so much loss and so much sorrow, it could not have been easy for Ted Kennedy to risk his heart again. That he did is a testament to how deeply he loved this remarkable woman from Louisiana. And she didn't just love him back. As Ted would often acknowledge, Vicki saved him. She gave him strength and purpose; joy and friendship; and stood by him always, especially in those last, hardest days.

We cannot know for certain how long we have here. We cannot foresee the trials or misfortunes that will test us along the way. We cannot know God's plan for us.

What we can do is to live out our lives as best we can with purpose, and love, and joy. We can use each day to show those who are closest to us how much we care about them, and treat others with the kindness and respect that we wish for ourselves. We can learn from our mistakes and grow from our failures. And we can strive at all costs to make a better world, so that someday, if we are blessed with the chance to look back on our time here, we can know that we spent it well; that we made a difference; that our fleeting presence had a lasting impact on the lives of other human beings.

This is how Ted Kennedy lived. This is his legacy. He once said of his brother Bobby that he need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, and I imagine he would say the same about himself. The greatest expectations were placed upon Ted Kennedy's shoulders because of who he was, but he surpassed them all because of who he became. We do not weep for him today because of the prestige attached to his name or his office. We weep because we loved this kind and tender hero who persevered through pain and tragedy - not for the sake of ambition or vanity; not for wealth or power; but only for the people and the country he loved.

In the days after September 11th, Teddy made it a point to personally call each one of the 177 families of this state who lost a loved one in the attack. But he didn't stop there. He kept calling and checking up on them. He fought through red tape to get them assistance and grief counseling. He invited them sailing, played with their children, and would write each family a letter whenever the anniversary of that terrible day came along. To one widow, he wrote the following:

"As you know so well, the passage of time never really heals the tragic memory of such a great loss, but we carry on, because we have to, because our loved one would want us to, and because there is still light to guide us in the world from the love they gave us."

We carry on.

Ted Kennedy has gone home now, guided by his faith and by the light of those he has loved and lost. At last he is with them once more, leaving those of us who grieve his passing with the memories he gave, the good he did, the dream he kept alive, and a single, enduring image - the image of a man on a boat; white mane tousled; smiling broadly as he sails into the wind, ready for what storms may come, carrying on toward some new and wondrous place just beyond the horizon. May God Bless Ted Kennedy, and may he rest in eternal peace.

THIS WEEK IN GOD.... First up from the God Machine this week is a new push from evangelical religious groups to kill health care reform.

Conservative Christian groups on Wednesday (Aug. 26) ramped up opposition to health care reform, saying the current system "has problems" but "it is working."

Members of the newly formed Freedom Federation, comprised of some of the largest conservative religious groups in the country, say they oppose taxpayer-supported abortion, rationed health care for the elderly and government control of personal health decisions.

Mathew Staver, who heads the legal group Liberty Counsel and is dean at Liberty University's law school, said the group agrees on certain core values.

And nothing, apparently, says "Christian values" to these groups and leaders like opposing the protections health care reform would provide to tens of millions of American families.

The Freedom Federation includes, among others, the American Family Association, the Church of God in Christ, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council Action, Liberty University and the Traditional Values Coalition. All of the groups, apparently, are led by right-wing activists who interpret the New Testament in a way that seems very hard to understand.

Also from the God Machine this week:

* Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) of Minnesota recently talked about how faith relates to the health care reform debate. She said, for example, that we should "thank God" that Sarah Palin wrote about "death panels." Bachmann added that conservatives will win the fight to kill reform "on our knees in prayer and fasting."

* Arizona pastor Steven Anderson prayed publicly for President Obama's death a day before one of his parishioners brought an assault rifle to a presidential event. It appears that the Secret Service recently chatted with Anderson.

* Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) has "spent more than a tenth of his campaign's receipts on the church he founded, a tidy tithe totaling $152,777." While lawmakers routinely set up tax-exempt nonprofits, Rush's approach "is different because a church is his center of operations and he concentrates on social services. But what his approach has in common with those of other lawmakers is the earmarking of tax dollars -- Rush earmarked nearly $700,000 for two related social services entities he helped establish." (thanks to Tammy for the tip)

* Can atheists adopt a child? An interesting legal dispute is underway in New Jersey. [Update: Oops. Someone alerted me to this story the other day, but I didn't notice the date. In other words, never mind. For what it's worth, the atheists won the case -- several decades ago.]

* In the wake of 9/11, officials in Kentucky created a state Office of Homeland Security. State lawmakers required that training materials include information that the General Assembly stressed a "dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth." The same law mandated that the state's Emergency Operations Center feature a plaque that said "the safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God." This week, Franklin Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate found this unconstitutional.

* And finally, a local church in north Florida encouraged kids to wear shirts to the local public school that read "Islam is of the Devil." The children were sent home. The Dove World Outreach Center Pastor Terry Jones said spreading the church's message is more important than education.

RATIONING.... Charles Krauthammer warns that rationing will be inevitable if health care reform passes. Ezra Klein explains that it's too late.

It is not a difference of opinion, or a conversation about semantics. We ration. We ration without discussion, remorse or concern. We ration health care the way we ration other goods: We make it too expensive for everyone to afford. [...]

Twenty-seven percent of Canadians wait more than four months for treatment, versus only four percent of Americans. Twenty-four percent of Americans can't afford medical care at all, versus only 6 percent of Canadians. And the American numbers are understated because if you can't afford your first appointment, you never learn you couldn't afford the medicine or test that the doctor would have prescribed.

We ration. And if the numbers and the surveys don't convince you of the point, this is what it looks like when we ration.

Perhaps the best I've seen on the subject came from the NYT's David Leonhardt in June, who explained that "the case against rationing isn't really a substantive argument. It's a clever set of buzzwords that tries to hide the fact that societies must make choices."

In truth, rationing is an inescapable part of economic life. It is the process of allocating scarce resources. Even in the United States, the richest society in human history, we are constantly rationing. We ration spots in good public high schools. We ration lakefront homes. We ration the best cuts of steak and wild-caught salmon.

Health care, I realize, seems as if it should be different. But it isn't. Already, we cannot afford every form of medical care that we might like. So we ration.

We spend billions of dollars on operations, tests and drugs that haven't been proved to make people healthier. Yet we have not spent the money to install computerized medical records -- and we suffer more medical errors than many other countries.

We underpay primary care doctors, relative to specialists, and they keep us stewing in waiting rooms while they try to see as many patients as possible. We don't reimburse different specialists for time spent collaborating with one another, and many hard-to-diagnose conditions go untreated. We don't pay nurses to counsel people on how to improve their diets or remember to take their pills, and manageable cases of diabetes and heart disease become fatal. [...]

The choice isn't between rationing and not rationing. It's between rationing well and rationing badly. Given that the United States devotes far more of its economy to health care than other rich countries, and gets worse results by many measures, it's hard to argue that we are now rationing very rationally.

It's a subject the country ought to be able to look at intelligently. It's not. We're stuck having a debate with the public discourse we have, not the public discourse we might want or wish to have at a later time.

ENZI TRASHES HEALTH CARE REFORM.... Sen. Mike Enzi (R) of Wyoming delivered the Republican address this morning, and not surprisingly, talked about health care reform. The message was unequivocal.

Democratic healthcare reform will drive up the deficit, discriminate against the elderly and do little to control costs, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) alleged in the weekly Republican radio address.

Enzi, ranking member of the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee and a member of the so-called "group of six" senators working for a bipartisan compromise, also accused Democrats of hurrying the legislative process.

"The Democrats are trying to rush a bill through the process that will actually make our nation's finances sicker without saving you money," Enzi said in the weekly GOP address. "The American people are growing increasingly concerned about out of control spending in Washington that's leaving us with trillions of dollars of debt."

Adopting one of the GOP's favored lines of attack, Enzi said the plan would particularly hurt the elderly.

""These bills also raid Medicare," Enzi said. "This will result in cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from the elderly to create new government programs."

These are garbage arguments, and Enzi knows it. No serious person should take them seriously. That Enzi made them the official party message of the week says a great deal about the ridiculous way in which the Republican Party is treating the debate. (Seriously, Dems are "rushing"? How much slower can this process go?)

But let's also note the larger context: Mike Enzi is one of just three Senate Republicans negotiating towards a "bipartisan compromise" on reform. This morning he sounded like a right-wing, talk-radio loudmouth, but he's nevertheless one of the key lawmakers Democrats expect to work with in good faith.

On Monday, Enzi told constituents he has no intention of compromising with Democrats, and is only engaged in negotiations with Democrats so he can force concessions on a deal he's likely to oppose anyway. And on Saturday, he's trashing the underlying basics of the reform package.

The majority is trying to find common ground on health care reform with someone who opposes health care reform. With each passing day, this gets slightly more insane.

As Krugman recently explained: "The central fact of the health care debate is that there is essentially no agreement on anything -- values, philosophy, vision of how the world works -- between the two sides. Progressives want universal coverage, and see an expanded government role as essential to getting there. Conservatives believe, in the face of all evidence, that free markets are the answer. And Enzi is very conservative. According to Vote View, my site for left-right rankings, Enzi was the 8th most conservative Senator in the last Congress -- almost in the same league as Inhofe or DeMint. This is the quest for bipartisanship gone stark raving mad."

THE SENIOR SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MAINE.... For all the recent talk about trying to strike a "deal" on health care reform, the truth is, the outline of an agreement isn't hard to imagine.

As Kevin Drum noted yesterday, "In theory, a deal should be fairly easy. Keep the insurance reform stuff and the increased subsidies, dump the public option, add in a few other goodies here and there for both sides, and voila. Dinner is served. But who's going to join us at the table? Are there any Republicans left who will vote for any healthcare plan at all, regardless of what is or isn't in it?"

Put aside, at least for now, whether that seems like a worthwhile deal for Democrats, and whether the idea of pursuing a deal has merit. The point is, for all the efforts this year, the barebones of a deal are right in front of lawmakers. Kevin's question, then, deserves an answer: if there are going to be negotiations, who will join reformers at the table?

Eyes turn to the senior senator from Maine.

As Congress prepares to hit the restart button on the health care debate, Senator Olympia J. Snowe does not relish the prospect of becoming a Group of One.

"I certainly hope not," exclaimed Ms. Snowe, about the possibility that she could end up as the sole Republican willing to join Senate Democrats in moving ahead on a broad change in health care.

The arithmetic is obvious. There are three Senate Republicans talking about a bipartisan deal. Two of the three -- Iowa's Chuck Grassley and Wyoming's Mike Enzi -- have made it painfully clear that they oppose health care reform. Whether Snowe likes it or not, that leaves a Group of One.

The NYT's Carl Hulse added, "This has given Ms. Snowe a high degree of leverage as Democrats ask, What does Olympia Snowe want?"

To her credit, Snowe is nowhere close to Grassley's and Enzi's position. She believes the status quo really does represent a health care crisis, that the uninsured should be covered, and that those with insurance may not appreciate what's around the corner. "They may say they are satisfied now," Snowe told Hulse, "but it is going to get worse, given the skyrocketing increases that are only going to persist. Something needs to be done to remove the deep anxiety that people find themselves in because of the lack of health insurance."

She even sees the value in a public plan competing with private insurers, though Snowe prefers a "trigger" that would kick in later.

Snowe, in other words, supports some kind of health care reform -- which makes her unique in the Republican caucus. The Gang of Six charade has become farcical. If the goal is to strike a deal, the White House should probably go around it and invite her over for a detailed chat.

REID'S MUDDLED SUPPORT FOR A PUBLIC OPTION.... On a conference call yesterday afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) emphasized his support for a public option as part of health care reform. That support started sounding a little shaky, though, when the Democrats' Senate leader explained what he means by "public option."

"I've told people, whoever will listen, that I am in favor of the public option," Reid said in answer to a participant who asked why he hasn't been more vocal on his position. "We're working now to try to come up with a program that would allow that to take place."

Reid said a public option is essential to provide competition to private insurance companies that enjoy an exemption from federal anti-trust laws.

He added that "a lot of people misunderstand" the public option as "some government run program."

"But there are many ways we can do it," he said. "One would be to have an entity like Medicare. I really don't favor that. I think what we should have is a private entity that has direction from the federal government."

This comes as something of a surprise. Reid "really" doesn't "favor" a Medicare-like public option, which I thought was largely the point of the public option. The "private entity," rather, sounds like a co-op.

Reid's perspective on this is no small matter. As the Senate Majority Leader, if Reid balks on a real public option, and prefers co-ops, the chances of the final Senate bill including a genuine public option are remote. Reid's challenge of rallying support for a bill along the lines of the HELP Committee's legislation would be hard enough under the current circumstances. If he's announcing, "I really don't favor" a "government-run" plan, the hurdle becomes insurmountable.

Reid spokesman Jim Manley later told Brian Beutler, "The govt could contract w a private company to administer the public option. [Sen. Reid] is willing to consider a co-op if he is shown it works to make insurers honest."

That doesn't exactly clear up what it is Reid will be fighting for in September.

DON'T HEART HUCKABEE.... Even among those who abhor his political ideology, there's a sense that Mike Huckabee is just a nice guy. He tells charming stories, jokes around with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and plays bass in a band. As right-wing preachers-turned-politicians go, Huckabee seems likable and non-threatening. The common joke among liberals is that they wouldn't vote for him for president, but they'd vote for him for neighbor.

So, let's be clear: there's a deeply ugly aspect of Mike Huckabee's personality, and it's rather twisted. Sam Stein reports:

Conservative media figures are blasting Democrats for trying to draw political gain from the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. But on Thursday, it was one of their own -- former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee -- who went there.

The 2008 Republican presidential candidate suggested during his radio show, "The Huckabee Report," on Thursday that, under President Obama's health care plan, Kennedy would have been told to "go home to take pain pills and die" during his last year of life.

"[I]t was President Obama himself who suggested that seniors who don't have as long to live might want to consider just taking a pain pill instead of getting an expensive operation to cure them," said Huckabee. "Yet when Sen. Kennedy was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at 77, did he give up on life and go home to take pain pills and die? Of course not. He freely did what most of us would do. He choose an expensive operation and painful follow up treatments. He saw his work as vitally important and so he fought for every minute he could stay on this earth doing it. He would be a very fortunate man if his heroic last few months were what future generations remember him most for."

These aren't the words of someone with a strong character. These are vicious, perverse remarks that tell us a great deal about who Huckabee really is.

The "substance" of his on-air comments is unusually stupid -- Obama did not "suggest" anything of the sort, and there's nothing in any Democratic proposal to bolster these insane attacks -- and the politics is nearly as bad. Huckabee probably hopes to impress the Tea Bagging crowd with this disgusting rhetoric, proving that Sarah Palin isn't the only crazy far-right voice who deserves their adoration in advance of 2012.

Ed Kilgore concluded, "This despicable rant should disqualify Mike Huckabee from any further liberal sympathy, no matter how much he tries to joke or rock-n-roll his way back into mainstream acceptability."

Ideally, it'd disqualify Huckabee for even more than that.

FRIDAY'S MINI-REPORT.... Today's edition of quick hits:

* Consumer spending in the U.S. edges up, just a little.

* Iran really shouldn't stonewall nuclear watchdogs.

* The Taliban was driven from three Pashtun-dominated districts in northern Afghanistan in 2001, and the area has been considered safe for quite a while. Now, Taliban insurgents are back, and they're taking over.

* On a related note, the more there are accusations of fraud and voter coercion in Afghanistan's presidential election, the worse it is for the legitimacy of the Kabul government.

* When it comes to the health care debate, conservatives seem almost obsessed with "death."

* Apparently hoping to prove how truly crazy he's become, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) claims to have been just days away from filing a lawsuit challenging the president's citizenship.

* I'm glad to see Tom Coburn's remarks this week to a wife of a brain-injury victim start to get noticed. If Democrats were better organized and had a more favorable media environment, the video probably would be the single most important exchange of the summer.

* According to local officials, including some very conservative Republicans, the Obama White House is doing some terrific work on post-Katrina efforts in Louisiana.

* Newt Gingrich wants President Obama to fire Attorney General Eric Holder. Newt Gingrich isn't very bright.

* South Carolina's GOP lawmakers are moving forward with possible impeachment plans against Gov. Mark Sanford (R).

* On a related note, half of Sanford's constituents want him to go away.

* Greg Sargent keeps making Stephen Hayes look foolish. Hayes, for reasons I don't understand, keeps coming back for more, and Greg keeps making Hayes look worse.

* Nice piece today from Michael Tomasky on Drudge and Breitbart.

* I have no idea whether turnout for the next Tea Party events will be strong or not, but I've never seen events get this kind of publicity from an outlet pretending to be a "news" network.

* Michael Scheuer, still nutty.

* And finally, if you haven't already seen it, watch this mock cable-news debate: "Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?" It's painfully funny and painfully sad at the same time. Instant classic.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

REPLACING THE IRREPLACEABLE.... On CNN yesterday afternoon, reflecting on Ted Kennedy's legacy as one of the giants of the U.S. Senate, Wolf Blitzer pondered who might someday emerge as a legislative leader with Kennedy's stature and success.

"A lot of people think it might be someone else who sought the presidency, lost and decided, 'You know what, my life's work will now be a senator' and that is Senator McCain, who has been a very good friend to Senator Kennedy," Blitzer said. "We'll see if that becomes the passion that became the passion of Senator Kennedy after he lost to Jimmy Carter in that Democratic presidential nomination back in 1980."

What's more, as Faiz Shakir noted, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Cynthia Tucker also argued yesterday, "John McCain could be the Senate's new Ted Kennedy." Tucker said McCain, since last year's election, "has bowed to the harsh nihilism that seems to be all that Republicans represent these days," but said "McCain's reputation for a principled bipartisanship was intact" last year.

I guess I was watching a different presidential campaign last year. As I recall, McCain spent the year lying, flip-flopping, running cheap and ugly ads, and choosing a crazy person as his running mate.

But in some ways, that these observations are even being made tells an important story. The political media establishment has long adored McCain. Many wondered, after McCain's offensive conduct on the campaign trail last year, whether that same political media establishment would welcome him back with open arms once the presidential race ended. The answer now seems obvious. McCain hasn't done anything to earn their love, but that apparently doesn't matter.

As for the comparison itself, Kennedy was among the most accomplished lawmakers in the history of the United States Senate. McCain has an impressive personal background, but very few accomplishments to his name. Kennedy was principled, brilliant, and knowledgeable. McCain is inconsistent, easily confused, and has no patience for details. Kennedy was widely admired and respected by those who worked with him. McCain is known for screaming at his colleagues, even Republicans, who dare to disagree with him.

We knew Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy was a friend of ours. John McCain is no Ted Kennedy.

SOCIAL SECURITY IS A GOVERNMENT PROGRAM.... For a while, so many conservative activists were convinced that Medicare isn't a government program that Tim Noah was able to start tracking it as a genuine meme. It was indicative of a discourse gone insane -- confused opponents of health care reform were sincerely, literally arguing, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare."

Is Social Security next? Consider this anecdote from Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R) town-hall meeting in Lake Elmo, Minn., last night. (via Matt Corley)

At times tempers flared at the forum, with constituents shouting at one another.

LeRoy Schaffer, a St. Francis city council member, dressed in a tuxedo and top hat for the occasion. Shaffer got visibly emotional asking Bachmann about the future of health care and the role of special interests in Washington.

"I'll be danged if I am going to give up my Social Security because of socialism," Schaffer said, before being booed by the crowd.

Well, at least he was booed.

Update: Looks like the Roll Call report didn't include the relevant context. LeRoy Schaffer is actually a supporter of government safety-net programs. He said before the event, "I'm on Social Security and I've got Medicare. I have socialized medicine. I wouldn't give it up for anything in the world."

I suppose he was booed, then, because he's in favor of Social Security?

QUOTE OF THE DAY.... The good news is, nearly four-dozen advertisers have now pulled their sponsorship of Glenn Beck's deranged Fox News program. The bad news is, Beck's ratings have gone up, in part because he's acting like an even bigger lunatic than usual, and clowns doing funny dances tend to draw a crowd.

Yesterday was especially astounding. He argued on the air, for example, that President Obama intends to create a "civilian national security force," which will be similar to Hitler's SS and Saddam Hussein. Apparently, this has something to do with AmeriCorps, which Beck initially said has a $500 billion budget. (He corrected himself later in the show, though his guest didn't blink when he originally made the claim.)

Towards the end of the show, after scrawling on a variety of boards and pieces of paper, Beck summarized his key observation. On a chalkboard, Beck had written the words, "Obama," "Left Internationalist," "Graft," "ACORN Style Organizations," "Revolution," and "Hidden Agenda." If you circle some of the first letters of these important words, Beck says, it spells "OLIGARH." Beck told his viewers there's only one letter missing. If you're thinking that letter is "c," you're not medicated enough to understand Beck's show.

The missing letter is "y," because the word he hoped to spell is "OLIGARHY." No, that word doesn't exist in the English language, but that's probably because the dictionary was written by some communist community organizer who wants to keep Glenn Beck and his viewers down.

The quote of the day, however, came towards the end: "I'm tired of being a sheep. I'm tired of being a victim. I'm tired of being pushed around. You know what? The gloves come off."

Glenn Beck is a "victim"? Why is it that disturbed right-wing nuts always feel sorry for themselves? Beck is very well paid to say crazy things on television.

What's more, his minions take his insane tirades seriously. Whatever Beck says on Monday gets repeated by unhinged crazies on Wednesday.

Beck is getting worse. I can't help but worry that it's only a matter of time before he hurts someone.

STILL WAITING FOR THAT GOP ALTERNATIVE.... Democratic health care reform proposals have become a little controversial, but if we put the politics aside for a moment, we see that the majority party has -- for good or ill -- grabbed a bull by the horns. The country has been waiting for policymakers to step up on health care for the better part of a century, and Democrats have put together a credible, affordable proposal(s) that expands coverage, offers consumer protections, tackles rising costs, and strengthens Medicare. It's a serious plan that makes hard choices. It's the kind of thing grown-up policymakers do.

I thought about this after seeing Jonathan Cohn's item today on the latest stupidity from the RNC on Medicare.

For all of the Republican talk about helping seniors, they have almost nothing in their policy arsenal that would actually, you know, help seniors. They're not, for example, proposing to fill in the donut hole -- the gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage that means high out-of-pocket costs for seniors with multiple conditions. Nor do they have any ideas for how to improve the program's financial footing -- except, of course, to cut it. Democrats are trying to do both, though you'd never know it from the way the health reform debate is unfolding.

It got me thinking. Cohn's right, the Republicans' policy on Medicare falls somewhere between incoherent and imaginary. But let's go one step further: weren't Republicans actually supposed to come up with a health care plan of their own, rather than just taking pathetic shots at the proposal on the table?

The last time I checked, Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), chairman of the House GOP Health Care Solutions Group, said House Republicans would not release a health care reform alternative. Republican lawmakers had promised -- publicly and repeatedly -- that they would not only come up with a reform plan, but that their plan would be vastly superior to the Democratic approach. Blunt was walking those assurances back.

A day later, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said GOP officials are "continuing to put the final touches on our bill." He added, "[W]e hope to see it soon."

Come to think of it, we'd all like to see it soon. Boehner's comments on this came 35 days ago. The "final touches" seem to be taking longer than expected.

So, where is it? Presumably, Republicans came up with a Health Care Solutions Group because it has some "solutions" in mind.

It's easy to take dishonest shots at the credible bill on the table, but to be taken seriously, Republicans -- who would like to be in the majority in 2011 -- should tell the country how they'd improve the failing system.

Talk is cheap. GOP leaders have said they have a plan, will present a plan, and can prove that their plan is the better way to go. I'm sure Americans would benefit from the opportunity to evaluate two competing approaches to the same crisis, seeing which plan is stronger.

Put-up-or-shut-up time.

MAYBE WE SHOULD CALL IT THE 'FREE PONY OPTION'.... It's nearly September, and the most contentious aspect of the health care reform debate is still the public option. The debate might be more productive if the public had a clue what the public option is.

A new survey by Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates for the AARP reveals widespread uncertainty about the nature of the "public option" -- a government-run health insurance policy that would be offered along with private policies in the newly-created health insurance exchanges. Just 37 percent of the poll's respondents correctly identified the public option from a list of three choices provided to them....

It is tempting to attribute these results to attempts by conservatives to blur the distinctions of the health care debate. And surely that is part of the story. But it may not be all that much of it. Democrats were more likely than Republicans to correctly identify the public option in this poll, but not by all that wide a margin -- 41 percent versus 34 percent. Meanwhile, 35 percent of Republicans thought the public option refers to "creating a national healthcare system like they have in Great Britain" -- but so did 23 percent of Democrats.

The poll specifically asked, "When politicians talk about including a 'public option' in healthcare reform, what do you think they mean?" Regardless of whether the respondents actually liked the idea or not, this simply sought to measure public understanding. The results found that just 37% realized that a public option would create a government-funded alternative to compete with private insurers; 26% thought a public option would create a British-style system; 13% thought a public option would create network of co-ops, and 23% simply had no idea.

As Nate Silver explained, if poll respondents had simply guessed at random, the percentage of those who got the question right wouldn't have been much different.

Josh Marshall added, "[T]he fact that 'public option' is so un-descriptive and opaque has only made it easier for Republicans to portray it as some sort of program for mass euthanasia. So I'm not sure what there is to say here or do but laugh because the only other thing to do is cry."

Well, one other alternative is to start calling the public option something else. I always thought it was rather simple and descriptive, but what do I know. At this point, perhaps it's better to emphasize its qualities? Call it the "competition option" or the "public choice option"?

Or perhaps just go straight for the emotional appeal and call it the "free pony option." People love ponies.

THE PEARLSTEIN PLAN.... The Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein has written some pretty powerful columns on health care reform lately -- some of which I enthusiastically endorse, some of which I found less persuasive -- but today's piece is, in effect, the Pearlstein Plan. As the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist sees it, "there is a deal to be had here if only Democrats would be willing to take it." The Pearlstein Plan has nine elements, including:

* Universal coverage. Finally, a requirement that every American purchase a minimum, a basic health insurance plan.

* Insurance exchanges. Each state or region will set up government-supervised insurance exchanges through which private insurers can offer policies to the uninsured, the self-employed and small businesses. Coverage standards will be set nationally, and participating companies must agree to take all customers, regardless of pre-existing conditions, at rates that vary only slightly by age.

* Options. Among the options would be lower-cost, high-deductible plans long pushed by Republicans. Another: nonprofit insurance "cooperatives" set up by participating hospitals and physicians groups offering an alternative to traditional fee-for-service medicine.

* Low-income subsidies. Households with incomes up to 300 percent of the poverty line would be able to buy the average-priced basic plan through the exchanges for no more than 15 percent of pre-tax income, with the balance paid for by the government.

* Employer mandate. All businesses would be required to pay for at least half of the cost of a basic insurance policy for all workers and their immediate family, or pay the government a progressive tax on payrolls over $250,000, exempting the smallest businesses. While distasteful to Republicans, the mandate would level the competitive playing field among firms that now offer health insurance and those that don't, while generating revenue to pay for premium subsidies.

* Tax on extravagant health plans. A tax of 25 percent would be imposed on health plans with an actuarial value of $10,000 for individuals and $20,000 for families, indexed to inflation. While distasteful to unions, the measure is designed to raise revenue for subsidies, make patients more cost-conscious and help force down insurance premiums.

The Pearlstein Plan, which would scuttle the public option altogether, would also include some "malpractice reform," cost-containment measures, and control on rationing.

Some of this approach seems fairly sound. Indeed, some of the Pearlstein Plan overlaps with what Democrats are already proposing.

I had one over-arching problem with the pitch. If there's "a deal to be had here," who is the deal with?

Pearlstein concedes the deal is not intended to win over Republican leaders on the Hill, because "they're determined to derail any health reform plan." That's clearly true. But Pearlstein goes on to say that his proposal would eventually win over "a sizeable number of Republicans who will come to realize that it's better for their careers to be on the right side of history than on the good side of the Republican leadership."

Really? I'd like to believe this is true, but I don't. Can anyone identify this "sizeable number of Republicans" who've expressed even the slightest hint of willingness to support reform? Remember, when the White House signaled a willingness to scrap the public option, not one GOP lawmaker -- literally, not one -- responded by saying, "Well, if Obama is willing to drop the public option, we're ready to find some common ground." On the contrary, Republicans shot down the trial balloon by insisting no concessions would be enough -- the GOP will oppose reform no matter what.

Pearlstein added that his compromise approach is also "necessary to win broad support from an American public wary of federal deficits, anxious about losing the health care it already has and fearful of radical change." Again, this sounds nice, but the Democratic plan already improves the deficit picture, let's people keep what they have, and steers clear of radical change.

What's more, even if Dems picked up on the Pearlstein Plan, the landscape wouldn't change. The "American public" is responding to baseless, ridiculous, and insane ideas from the likes of Beck, Limbaugh, Palin, Armey, and LaRouche cultists. Would these right-wing lunatics suddenly become more responsible if the Pearlstein Plan were on the table? Of course not -- reality has nothing to do with their attacks anyway.

Obama, Pelosi, and Reid could hold a press conference today, offering a reform package with no public option, no tax increases on the middle class, no "death panels" or "death books," no funding for abortion, no coverage of undocumented immigrants, no rationing, and some "malpractice reform" thrown in, and Republicans would immediately respond with, "It's not good enough."

Why? Because they don't support health care reform.

FRIDAY'S CAMPAIGN ROUND-UP....Today's installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn't generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers.

* Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) has chosen his former chief of staff, George LeMieux, to replace Sen. Mel Martinez (R) through the end of next year. LeMieux is Crist's closest political advisor and serves as deputy state attorney general until 2006.

* To the widespread disappointment of Democrats everywhere, Mitt Romney will not run for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in January.

* A Democracy Corps poll in New Jersey shows Chris Christie (R) leading incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine by just two points, 43% to 41%, with independent Chris Daggett with 7% support. In a head-to-head contest, Christie is up by three, 46% to 43%.

* Rex Rammell, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Idaho, joked this week about hunting President Obama. He later said he was kidding, and "would never support him being assassinated."

* As if Sen. David Vitter's (R-La.) re-election prospects weren't challenging enough -- he's facing a credible Democratic challenger and is burdened by a prostitution scandal -- he may soon face a primary challenge from Gen. Russell Honore.

* Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas (R) will step down next year after four terms, but he will not run for president in 2012.

* On a related note, as much as I appreciate the kind emails, I will not be running to replace Douglas as governor next year.

* Theocrat Roy Moore (R), running for governor in Alabama next year, has secured an endorsement from actor Chuck Norris.

PUBLIC OPTION WATCH.... Especially now that the Senate Democratic caucus has 59 members, and it's unclear whether any of its members would support a Republican filibuster of health care reform, it's helpful to know which Dems are on board with a public option, and which aren't.

On Wednesday, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) of Louisiana seemed to join Joe Lieberman in the group of caucus members opposed to an optional public plan. Asked under what circumstances she would support a public option, Landrieu said, "[V]ery few, if any. I'd prefer a private market-based approach to any health care reform that would extend coverage." She said covering the uninsured would be "nice," but said "but it would be immoral to bankrupt the country while doing so." (Since a public option would lower costs, Landrieu's argument doesn't make sense.)

Yesterday, meanwhile, Sen. Mark Warner (D) of Virginia signaled support for a public option. His spokesperson made it seem as if Warner isn't an enthusiastic supporter of the idea, but unlike Landrieu and Lieberman, Warner would support a bill if it included the provision: "It's not a make or break thing -- he wants to see a health reform bill that contains costs, and if it includes a public option ... he would vote for it."

Sen. Kay Hagan (D) of North Carolina has already supported a public option in the Senate HELP Committee bill, but she's signaled a willingness to negotiate it away.

As a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) voted in favor of a health care reform bill with a public option. But she's also interested in a compromise that would scrap the public option in favor of system of private, state-based, non-profit health-care cooperatives. "Having been a state senator for 10 years," she said, "I think states can do a good job at that."

Kay Hagan's vote for the public option wasn't easily won, so it's little surprise that she's open to alternatives.

True, but here's hoping Hagan and her colleagues remember what Republican leaders have said about concessions -- whether reform advocates keep or scrap a public option and/or a co-op plan, the GOP will oppose the legislation.

When two competing sides have the same goal in mind -- reforming a broken system -- compromise is possible. When two competing sides have opposite goals in mind -- one wants to pass reform, one wants to kill it -- compromise isn't possible.

Hagan has already supported a public option, and I'm glad. But if she thinks flexibility on the issue may generate broader support for the larger goal, she's going to be disappointed by the Republican response.

WHEN AN ARGUMENT REACHES THE PITTS.... Rep. Joe Pitts (R) of Pennsylvania hosted a town-hall meeting this week, and made a brief concession to reality: "One thing I think is being misrepresented by my side of the aisle is death panels. There are no death panels in this bill."

Sounds great, right? Here we have a very conservative lawmaker willing to note the truth in public. It's a pleasant and welcome surprise.

But he couldn't leave well enough alone.

"The danger here that is being raised, that some people are afraid of, is that seniors, when they get into a very vulnerable condition, and maybe even depression, can be pressured or feel vulnerable to being pressured to sign away certain medical treatments. There are not enough safeguards to make sure that doesn't happen."

I really don't know what this means. As David Weigel asked, "Who's pressuring the seniors, exactly?"

Pitts makes it sound as if government officials will be visiting individual seniors, encouraging them to forgo medical treatment. That's crazy.

But you know what? Fine. We need more "safeguards" to prevent an imaginary scenario from happening? No problem. If Joe Pitts wants to write up some protections to make sure depressed seniors aren't pressured by the government to sign away medical care, that'd be great. Will he consider supporting health care reform if Democrats add his "safeguards" to the bill?

ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING.... You probably think I'm going out of my way to pick on Chuck Grassley. I'm not, but let's face it -- he deserves the criticism.

Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa indicated Thursday he was no longer sure whether negotiators can reach a bipartisan deal in September, citing mounting public concern about excessive government spending and soaring federal deficits.

Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee which is attempting to draft a bipartisan health care measure, said in a telephone interview from Iowa with Kaiser Health News, that he was struck by the intensity of Iowans' criticism of the health care proposals and "fear" of excessive federal spending during several weeks of town hall meetings throughout his state.

Asked whether he thought the six Democratic and Republican negotiators on the committee would be able to cut a deal when Congress returns from its summer recess next month, Grassley replied: "If you asked me that on Aug. 6, I would have said yes, I think so, September. But you're asking me on Aug. 27 and you've got the impact of democracy in America. Everybody's showing up at town meetings.... If town meetings are going to mean anything, if democracy is going to mean anything, then you listen to your people and you act accordingly."

A few things. First, the folks who are "showing up at town meetings," ranting and raving about reform, are angry because they don't know what they're talking about. They've been filled with rage, lies, and paranoia. Killing a necessary reform bill to placate ridiculous cries from gullible people is politics at its most inane. Responsible lawmakers do the right thing, even when misguided mobs whine about it. Letting temper tantrums, motivated by stupidity, dictate public policy only encourages more stupid temper tantrums.

Second, Grassley has a confused sense of who "everybody" is. Grassley has 3 million constituents. Let's say, hypothetically, Grassley has heard angry right-wing screams from, say, 3,000 Iowans at town-hall events. That would mean the senator had heard strenuous opposition to reform from exactly 0.1% of his constituents. If he's heard far-right town-hall enmity from 30,000 Iowans -- a farfetched claim, to be sure -- that would still only be 1% of the people Grassley represents.

He's concerned about "democracy meaning something"? A clear majority of Americans -- and a clear majority of Iowans -- elected Barack Obama as president. His signature domestic issue was health care reform. "You listen to your people and you act accordingly."

Grassley doesn't give a damn about the deficit or screaming Teabaggers or government spending. He wants to kill health care reform. The only question now is whether congressional Democrats are prepared to help him with this goal.

SUPPORT FOR ENERGY REFORM (FOR NOW).... At some point in the next few months, federal policymakers will again shift their attention to energy policy. Despite the complaints about the House-passed American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), also known as Waxman-Markey, public support for these efforts looks fairly strong, at least for now.

Most Americans approve of the way President Obama is handling energy issues and support efforts by him and Democrats in Congress to overhaul energy policy -- including the controversial cap-and-trade approach to limiting greenhouse gas emissions, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Even as public support has slipped for Obama's health-care proposals, support for ambitious changes in energy policy has been steady. Although the issue of health care arouses more intense feelings than energy policy does, those who do feel strongly about energy and climate policy tend to tilt toward the administration's position and a broad majority of people echo Democratic lawmakers' views on the benefits of proposed changes.

Nearly six in 10 of those polled support the proposed changes to U.S. energy policy being developed by Congress and the administration. Fifty-five percent of Americans approve of the way Obama is handling the issue, compared with 30 percent who do not. A narrower majority, 52 to 43 percent, back a cap-and-trade system; that margin is unchanged since June.

The appetite for change has low thresholds. If the plan to reduce greenhouse emissions cost an extra $10 a month, 58% of Americans are comfortable with that. If it cost an extra $25 a month, support drops to $39%. (Proposals backed by Democrats are expected to cost less than $10 a month.)

That said, the public's instincts seem to be on the right track: "Fewer than one in five say that the reform efforts would lead to job losses; more than twice as many see added jobs."

Support for government action to develop more solar and wind power is up to 91%, and federal efforts to develop electric car technology is 82%. Asked about "requiring more energy conservation by businesses and industries," 78% support government action, 62% of them "strongly."

So, this is all pretty encouraging, right? For now, yes. What happens, though, when the coal industry and Fox News decide that energy reform will require child sacrifices and human cannibalism? What happens when the Council on American Goodness runs ads saying that President Obama's energy policies will make it illegal for families to use the bathroom?

I'm delighted support for Democratic energy policies is strong. I'm concerned, however, that the support could disappear, now that right-wing and corporate activists have learned how to shake up the policy landscape.

THE WORDS OF A REFORM OPPONENT.... If I didn't know better, I might think Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) -- ostensibly the leading GOP negotiators on health care reform -- doesn't really want a bill.

Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, one of three Senate Republicans negotiating on health care, said the soaring federal budget deficit "puts a stake in the heart" of $1 trillion measures being considered by lawmakers.

Grassley, the top Republican on the finance committee, said a bipartisan plan being discussed by panel members will have to be scaled back to have any chance of passing in the wake of new deficit projections released this week. [...]

"It's going to have a big impact on whether I'll even support something," he said at a town-hall meeting Aug. 26 in Le Mars, Iowa.

This doesn't make any sense. Literally, none. It's possible that Grassley, after nearly three decades in the Senate, doesn't understand the basics of budgets and public policy, but I think it's more likely that he opposes health care reform and is looking for an excuse. After all, as a substantive matter, Grassley has the entire situation backwards -- reform wouldn't add to the deficit, and if long-term debt were his top concern, he'd be an enthusiastic proponent of the Democratic proposal.

Grassley's comments aren't the words of someone worried about deficit projections. Grassley's comments are the words of someone who wants to kill health care reform.

I'm tempted to ask Max Baucus to write 100 times on the chalkboard, "Chuck Grassley does not support health care reform. Chuck Grassley does not support health care reform. Chuck Grassley does not support health care reform."

What more would the guy have to do? Grassley wants to drive a stake into the heart of the reform bill, for reasons that defy common sense. He doesn't think he can reach an agreement with the administration. If he thinks the bill is "imperfect," he won't vote for it. He's prepared to vote against his own compromise bill, and as of this week, it's doubtful he'll "even support something."

What more is there to talk about with Chuck Grassley?

MAKING THE PUBLIC OPTION OPTIONAL.... Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R) of Texas has been one of the leading right-wing agitators against health care reform. It was a little odd, then, to see Armey accidentally tell The Economist that the public option may be a good idea.

"If you in fact freely choose to enroll in Medicare that's a wonderful gift, it's a charity, it's something I applaud. But when they force you in, that's tyranny."

The Economist added, "In arguing against the Democrats' plan, he says that Medicare is a form of tyranny, and that citizens should be able to choose to enroll in the program. This choice, between a public plan and private ones, is precisely what the Democrats propose in a public option."

Right. No one is proposing a public option that Americans would be "forced" into. That's why it's called an "option." It denotes something "optional." Eligible Americans would be able to choose whether to "opt" in or out. "Optional" and "mandatory," in the English language, are opposites.

And yet, this seems to come up all the time. Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.), the Blue Dog point-man on health care, said last week he would not vote for a plan that would "force government-run healthcare on anyone. Period." He added that the public plan would be "strictly ... an option." The fact that he had to make the not-so-bold declaration in the first place suggests he's been running into some folks who believe they would be forced into a public plan.

With that in mind, I have two suggestions going forward. First, reform proponents should probably start telling the public that even Dick Armey thinks the idea of a public option sounds like "a wonderful gift."

And second, Democrats should declare, publicly and loudly, that in response to popular demand, they've decided to make the public plan purely optional. Conservatives drive a hard bargain, but reform proponents are not above compromise. As this item, posted by Josh Marshall, put it, "I think Obama should use all the fictional friction points as bargaining chips. You want us to give up the tyranny of compulsory coverage? You win, Dick Armey. Will you support the bill now?"

THURDAY'S MINI-REPORT.... Today's edition of quick hits:

* The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation issues another grim report card: "The agency reported that the banking industry lost $3.7 billion in the second quarter amid a surge in bad loans made to home builders, commercial real estate developers, and small and midsize businesses. Its deposit insurance fund dropped 20 percent, to $10.4 billion, in the second quarter, its lowest level in nearly 16 years."

* The revised GDP numbers from the second quarter showed the economy shrank at a 1% annual rate. The previous estimate was a 1.5% decline.

* House Committee on Energy and Commerce put together a terrific resource, measuring the impact of health care reform on every congressional district in the country.

* Ted Kennedy's body arrived in Boston this afternoon, after traveling a 70-mile route, with spectators lining the streets.

* The RNC conceded today its claim that the government may discriminate against Republican voters for medical treatment isn't true. As an RNC spokesperson put it, the claim was "inartfully worded."

* A man who brought an assault rifle and a handgun to a presidential event in Arizona last week had attended church services the day before. His pastor told the congregation that he was going to "pray for Barack Obama to die and go to hell."

* A federal investigation prevented New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) from joining the Obama cabinet, but it looks like Richardson is in the clear.

* Blue Dog Democrats sure do get a lot of money from the pharmaceutical, health care. and health insurance industries.

* I'm glad to see Wendell Potter's efforts get some more attention. I still think his should be a household name by now. Is anyone's perspective more relevant in the health care debate?

* Adam Serwer 1, Andy McCarthy 0.

* Looks like Beck and O'Reilly have made Van Jones the man they love to hate.

* Remember when there was talk that John McCain might revert to his 2001 form after the presidential campaign was over? So much for that idea.

* It's good to see "Matthew Alexander" join VetVoice.

* I'm young and healthy, and plan to be around for a very long time. But if something horrible ever happens to me, by all means, politicize my death.

* I'm not entirely sure who Andrew Breitbart is, but his attacks on Ted Kennedy yesterday were vile.

* Limbaugh is, of course, attacking Kennedy, too.

* Digby asks an interesting question: "How long is everyone going to deny just how fu**ing crazy mainstream Republicanism has become? And when are people going to start asking seriously where this is headed?"

* And reader A.K. let me know about this insightful piece from Michael Seitzman, who shares a suggestion about how to deal with the crazies: "Stop trying to get these people to realize how wrong they are and how right you are. Stop trying to apply reason to the profoundly unreasonable. Stop trying to mitigate or explain their collective temper tantrum. Stop trying to curry their favor, their votes, their attention. They don't care about truth, right and wrong, good or bad. They care about stomping feet, crying victim, and pointing fingers."

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

PART D.... At a recent town-hall event, President Obama was asked about how to pay for health care reform without adding to the debt. "It's a great question," the presidents said. "First of all, I said I won't sign a bill that adds to the deficit or the national debt. Okay? So this will have to be paid for."

Obama then proceeded to take a stroll down memory lane. "That, by the way, is in contrast to the prescription drug bill that was passed that cost hundreds of billions of dollars, by the previous administration and previous Congress, that was not paid for at all, and that was a major contributor to our current national debt. That's why you will forgive me if sometimes I chuckle a little bit when I hear all these folks saying, 'oh, big-spending Obama' -- when I'm proposing something that will be paid for and they signed into law something that wasn't, and they had no problem with it. Same people, same folks. And they say with a straight face how we've got to be fiscally responsible."

It's a point that's gone largely overlooked of late. Just six years ago, Karl Rove thought he could lock up that "permanent Republican majority" by adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. Seniors -- at least the one who didn't get caught in the dreaded "donut hole" -- would be so impressed they'd vote GOP forever. All Republican policymakers had to do was approve a poorly-written bill that expanded government involvement in health care while adding trillions of dollars to long-term debt.

It has a certain relevance to the ongoing policy debate of the day.

Matt Yglesias does good service by reminding us of the 2003 Senate vote on Medicare Part D, the budget-busting prescription drugs for seniors bill that passed the Senate 54-44, even though it wasn't paid for (it adds trillions to the deficit over time). Here's the vote: it is interesting to note that the two Gang of Six members who are the most prominent naysayers and budget hawks on the Senate Finance Committee now, Chuck Grassley and Mike Enzi, voted for the bill. As did assorted other noisy conservatives like Sam Brownback, John Cornyn and John Kyl. What irresponsible spendthrifts!

Republicans who actually are deficit hawks -- John McCain (usually) and Lindsey Graham, for example -- voted against it. Many Democrats -- Ted Kennedy, Russ Feingold, Hillary Clinton -- also voted against it, mostly because they didn't think it provided sufficient coverage (and let the drug companies off the hook).

But the headline remain grousers like Grassley, who oppose the alleged expense of the Obama plan now (even though the President has vowed not to sign a bill that isn't, more or less, paid for). It should be noted that Max Baucus -- who has also made non-stop noises about fiscal responsibility -- voted for it, too.

The bill even included a provision on end-of-life counseling -- hey, look, GOP-approved "death panels" -- that the Tea Baggers of the day didn't seem to notice or care about. Indeed, at the time, conservative activists had nothing but good things to say about expanding an entitlement program by hundreds of billions of dollars, expanding the government's role in health care, and handing the tab to future generations. Where were the angry patriots comparing Bush to Hitler, and accusing Republican lawmakers of trying to turn the United States into Soviet Russia?

For that matter, somehow, Baucus and Grassley were on board with Bush's Medicare boondoggle, which included nothing to "bend the curve" and only added heavily to the debt. It's funny how standards change when there's a Democratic president.

HOW HATCH PERCEIVES THE SENATE.... Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) of Utah appeared on MSNBC this morning, ostensibly to reflect on the career of his friend Ted Kennedy, but he also talked about the polarization of the political parties.

"You [used to have] at least 12 conservatives that you could call conservatives on the Democratic side," Hatch said. "We probably had about 12 liberals on our side, and it was much more balanced."

"Today, there's only one moderate, as I see it, real moderate, in the Democratic United States senate," Hatch continued, "and on the Republican side we've gone pretty conservative, we only have two liberals on the Republican side, as I can see it now."

Hatch's office later added that the senator was referring to Nebraska's Ben Nelson as the only "moderate" Democrat, and Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe as the Republican "liberals."

Now, Hatch isn't a centrist, so his views are skewed by his ideology, but it seems to me the Senate Democratic caucus is filled with moderates. For goodness sakes, the party elected Harry Reid the Senate Majority Leader, and he's not even pro-choice.

Granted, Ben Nelson is the least liberal Dem in the chamber. But if "there's only one moderate" among Democrats, I guess that means Hatch considers Baucus, Landrieu, Bayh, Conrad, Lieberman, Lincoln, Specter, and Pryor to be "liberals"?

I wonder just how conservative a Senate Dem has to be in order to qualify as a "moderate."

INHOFE RAISES PROSPECT OF 'REVOLUTION'.... One of these days, it sure would be nice if Republicans felt the need to denounce this kind of radical, vile rhetoric.

At a town hall Wednesday night, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) told constituents, "We're almost reaching a revolution in this country."

Inhofe also said he doesn't need to know what's in a health care reform bill to vote against it.

"I don't have to read it, or know what's in it. I'm going to oppose it anyways," he said at the event in Chickasha, Okla.

The senator was in good company, with most of the audience agreeing with him and expressing their disdain for big government and Democrats. One man said, "No more compromise. We're losing our country."

I can't begin to understand why Inhofe and his like-minded extremists are so angry. But for an elected member of the United States Senate to speak publicly about the possibility of a "revolution" is deeply frightening.

What's more, let's not forget that Inhofe isn't the only one throwing around insane rhetoric like this. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has encouraged her supporters to "rise up" and be "armed and dangerous." Several GOP lawmakers are talking up the idea of "nullification," which is effectively secession-lite. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's former press secretary recently wrote about "the coming revolution," which he suggested might be similar to "Project Mayhem" from the movie "Fight Club." (In the film, "Project Mayhem" involved militarizing terrorist cells that blew up banks.)

Inhofe is a U.S. senator, and he's decided to fan the flames.

I'm reminded of something Josh Marshall wrote a few weeks ago: "[L]et's all collectively throw a little cold water on our faces and just realize that this is some really crazy stuff. The health care debate is now being driven by a perverse nonsense feedback loop in which the Palin/Limbaugh crowd says all sorts of completely insane lies, gets a lot of ... how shall we put it, impressionable people totally jacked up over a bunch of complete nonsense."

It's getting worse, the perverse nonsense feedback loop is getting louder, and elected members of Congress are dues-paying members the Palin/Limbaugh crowd.

It was just a couple of years ago when prominent conservatives told us criticism of the president and the United States government in the midst of a crisis was borderline, if not outright, treason. The love-it-or-leave-it crowd, after just seven months of a Democratic administration, has reached a very different conclusion about standards of patriotism in the 21st century.

DEFICITS AND HEALTH CARE REFORM.... After an eight-year hiatus, deficit reduction matters to Republicans again. Why the party that turned a quarter-trillion dollar surplus into a $1.2 trillion deficit thinks it has credibility on the subject is a mystery. That the party that put two wars and Medicare expansion on future generations' tab pretends to care about fiscal responsibility at all is rather comical.

But pretend they do. This week, for example, Rep. Dave Camp (R) of Michigan, the ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, responded to the mid-session budget review by insisting, "[I]f the House Democrats' unaffordable $1 trillion health care bill wasn't dead before, it should be now."

That, of course, doesn't make sense. Unlike the Republican policies of the Bush-era, the Democratic health care bill would be paid for, not added to the debt. What's more, as Ezra Klein explained, "Camp's argument boils down to the idea that big deficits mean we can't spend money. But he's not saying that 'if the $541.1 billion the military has requested in 2009 wasn't dead before, it should be now.' Nor is he saying that 'if the extension of President Bush's tax cuts wasn't dead before, it should be now.' Both of those comments would actually make more sense, as neither expenditure is revenue neutral. But Camp's comment isn't about the deficit. It's about killing health-care reform."

But if Camp's comment were about the deficit, he'd nevertheless have it backwards. Tim Fernholz argues this week that if policymakers are serious about improving the budget outlook, health care reform is the solution.

[Budget expert Stan Collender] is right that a deficit-neutral health-care bill will, by definition, have no direct effect on future government deficits and debt. But look more closely, and it becomes apparent that health-care reform will have major effects on decreasing deficits over the long term, when spending discipline is actually important....

The people standing directly in the way of health-care reform are conservative Democrats who claim to be deficit hawks, like Max Baucus and Kent Conrad in the Senate and the Blue Dogs caucus in the House. Of late, however, their interest in cutting the deficit has been eclipsed by political cowardice in the face of unified Republican obstruction to any and all reform efforts. The stumbling efforts of these supposed paragons of fiscal responsibility to maneuver the politics of health-care reform have decreased the chances of a bill that would reduce the deficit over the long term.

So get it straight: If the latest budget projections are keeping you up at night, the best way to ease your troubled mind is to support health-care reform. Otherwise, costs will keep rising, and deficits along with them. Opportunities to improve health care only come along once in a while -- the last major effort was 15 years ago. Fifteen years from now, it's possible that nearly one-quarter of every dollar spent in the U.S. will be spent on health care -- much of that coming, directly or indirectly, from the government. That sounds fiscally responsible, doesn't it?

Something for Dave Camp and his cohorts to keep in mind.

WHY WOULD DEMS WANT THAT?.... OK, so the Republican National Committee wants people to believe there may a plan out there to impose a health care "rationing system" in which Republican voters would be "discriminated against." What else is in the "2009 Future of American Health Survey"? David Weigel posted the whole thing.

Among the questions that stood out:

* Do you believe your health care decisions should be made by you and your doctor, and not government bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.?

* Rationing of health care in countries with socialized medicine had led to patients dying because they were forced to wait too long to receive treatment. Are you concerned that this would be inevitable in the U.S. under the Democrats' plan?

* Do you believe it is right for the government to use age and life expectancy as criteria for determining access to health care?

Now, it's hardly a secret why the RNC would lie to its own supporters. The "2009 Future of American Health Survey" isn't even a survey -- it's a fundraising gimmick. No one will be tallying the responses to the made-up questions.

But reading over these specific lies, and thinking about them in relation to the other insane attacks we've seen as part of the health care reform "debate," it occurs to me to ask right-wing opponents of reform a simple question: "Why would Dems want that?"

And by "that," I mean any of the various nightmares that insurance companies and GOP hacks have come up with. Why would Democrats want "death panels"? Why would they support widespread "rationing"? Why would they try to force bureaucrats between patients and their doctors? What possible incentive could they have?

They're politicians. They want to do well, but they also want to keep their jobs (i.e., win re-election). It's in their interests to pass legislation that would benefit the country, and which voters will like. Does it make any sense to think Democrats would take this rare opportunity to approve legislation that would kill off seniors, while making things drastically worse for tens of millions of people? Why would Dems want that?

Obviously, reason and rationality stopped being relevant quite a while ago. I get that. But I'd like to encourage well-intentioned folks who hear ridiculous claims about reform to ask themselves this basic question: does that sound like something a politician who wants to be popular would support?

PALIN'S CRACKER-JACK OPERATION.... If these circumstances sound familiar, it's because we've heard this story before.

Organizers of an Anchorage event that has been billing Sarah Palin for weeks as a star speaker were left scrambling Wednesday after learning that the former governor won't be there for tonight's event and claims to have never been asked.

It would be at least the fourth time in recent months that an anticipated Palin speech has fallen through after Palin and her camp disputed they had ever confirmed it. That includes the brouhaha over whether she'd speak at the annual congressional Republican fundraising dinner in Washington, D.C., this summer.

This time it's an event promoting an Alaska ballot measure aimed at making it illegal for teens to get an abortion without telling their parents. The Alaska Family Council has been advertising that Palin would give a speech and become the first official signer of the ballot petition tonight at ChangePoint, the Anchorage megachurch.

Alaska Family Council President Jim Minnery and his group have been promoting the event, and Palin's appearance, after having been in contact with the former governor's aides. Palin's spokesperson said yesterday, however, that "this is the first we have ever heard of a speech."

"All we can do is take people at their word that we've worked with in the past," Minnery said. "We've been working for several weeks on the event, promoting it very heavily. It would be a grave disappointment if she doesn't show up but the show will still go on."

She's not showing up. Palin's spokesperson said Palin will not even be in Alaska when the event is held.

Now, in general, a mix-up between a far-right group and a far-right politician over scheduling issues wouldn't be especially noteworthy. But what's interesting about this is that it keeps happening. This is, as the Anchorage Daily News noted, the fourth time some members of Palin's team committed to an event that other members of Palin's team never agreed to.

I'm reminded of an item Greg Sargent wrote in June

...Palin almost was a heartbeat away from the presidency last year, and she harbors ambitions to be less than a heartbeat away from it come 2012. If you want to be the most powerful person in the world, your ability to pick and manage a good staff matters a bit.

Yet reporters and Washington Republicans routinely joke about the quality of her staff, lamenting calls that go unreturned for days, mixed signals, and spasms of general incompetence.

That was nearly three months ago. Palin's operation apparently hasn't improved.

'IT HAS BEEN SUGGESTED' BY WHOM?.... The Republican National Committee has sent out a "2009 Future of American Health Survey." Question #4 reads:

"It has been suggested that the government could use voter registration to determine a person's political affiliation, prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system. Does this possibility concern you?"

Two quick thoughts. First, this is hopelessly insane.

Second, I was foolish enough to believe the RNC was incapable of surprising me. Live and learn.

THURSDAY'S CAMPAIGN ROUND-UP....Today's installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn't generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers.

* A new Rasmussen poll in New Jersey finds that former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie (R) now leads incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine (D), 47% to 36%. The 11-point margin is slightly less than Christie's 13-point lead a few weeks ago. When leaners are pushed into choose one of the candidates, though, Christie's lead shrinks from 13 points three weeks ago, to eight points now.

* In Virginia's gubernatorial race, the Republican Governors Association launched a new attack ad against Creigh Deeds (D), accusing him of being a "big spender."

* On a related note, Deeds has a new radio ad, which refers to the candidate as "that underdog guy." The spot tells voters Deeds is "a little more Mark Warner and a lot less George Bush."

* In a surprise announcement, three-term Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas (R) announced this morning that he will not seek re-election next year. Douglas added that he won't run for any other statewide office in 2010, but he will serve until the end of his current term.

* As expected, Rep. Charlie Melancon (D) of Louisiana announced this morning that he will take on Sen. David Vitter (R) next year. In light of Vitter's prostitution scandal, the race is expected to be competitive.

* Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias is expected to win the Democratic primary fight in next year's Senate race, but the field of primary opponents is growing. Yesterday, Chicago's Inspector General, David Hoffman, stepped down from his post to launch a Senate campaign.

* Last year, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) barely held onto his seat. Next year, he'll face another tough challenge -- state Rep. Harry Crawford (D), a DCCC favorite, announced yesterday he'll take on the controversial congressman.

PREDICTING POLITICIZATION.... It looks like word went out yesterday about what leading conservative voices should say about Ted Kennedy's death: complain about the memorial service that hasn't happened yet.

Hannity on Kennedy's death: "a lot of this was the politicizing of -- remember Paul Wellstone's death?" Discussing Kennedy's death during his radio program, Sean Hannity asserted, "We've got The Wall Street Journal reporting -- and by the way, a lot of this was the politicizing of -- remember Paul Wellstone's death? You know, 'Let's do everything for Paul.' And we're now being implored to get behind Obamacare because it's what Ted Kennedy would have wanted." [The Sean Hannity Show, 8/26/09]

Lopez on Kennedy's death: Wellstone service "turned into a political rally." The National Review Online's Kathyrn Jean Lopez wrote in an August 26 post to the blog The Corner titled "Re: The Politics of Ted Kennedy's Passing": "All politicos need to remember the Wellstone funeral when a well-known politician dies. Instead of memorializing his life, his service turned into a political rally. Some of the MSNBC coverage today I'm catching looks like a [sic] Obamacare convocation. Human life is about more than politics. And politics isn't American Idol. Or, even, The Lion of the Senate."

Allahpundit "sure" Kennedy "eulogies won't be politicized at all." Hot Air blogger Allahpundit wrote in an August 26 tweet: "Looking forward to the Democratic line-up at TK's memorial service. I'm sure the eulogies won't be politicized at all."

Instapundit: "A Wellstone Memorial on steroids?" An August 26 post on Instapundit.com linked to a post by JammieWearingFool with the headline "A Wellstone Memorial on steroids? And how did that work out?" JammieWearingFool asserted in the post, written the same day, "While we have no doubt the Democrats will do all they can to exploit his death and will probably have a Wellstone memorial on steroids, we'll stay above that." The link on the words "Wellstone memorial" were to an October 30, 2002, Slate.com article describing Wellstone's memorial services as a "pep rally."

All of this came the same day Kennedy's death was announced. In other words, one of the foremost concerns conservatives had yesterday was over a memorial service that hasn't happened, eulogies that haven't been delivered, and possible similarities to a Wellstone event that didn't happen the way they think it did.

There may be a genuine fear on the right that Kennedy's passing may inspire Democrats to complete his unfinished work, and give the left new resolve. A stirring memorial service with inspirational eulogies may have political consequences, so conservatives have apparently decided to try to crush that spirit now, before anyone starts to feel motivated to honor Kennedy's legacy.

Indeed, they're just laying the groundwork. Far-right bloggers and Fox News personalities may feel tempted to condemn Kennedy-related services when they occur, so they're letting everyone know now, "We'll be watching closely, waiting for rhetoric we don't like."

Hold services for a progressive champion that meets the demands of right-wing activists, or face their wrath.

MICHAEL STEELE ISN'T VERY BRIGHT.... Let this be a lesson to all of us -- when major political parties are looking for a chairman or chairwoman, it's not a good idea to pick someone conspicuously unintelligent. It's an even worse idea to have that person pretend to understand the basics of public policy.

This week, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele argued that Medicare is a) a great government program that Democrats are trying to undermine and the GOP is trying to protect; and b) a terrible program that doesn't work and should probably be privatized. The shift happened within 24 hours.

Steele spoke to NPR's Steve Inskeep this morning, and the host tried to get a better understanding of what Steele is thinking. Amanda Terkel posted the audio and a transcript, which are both worth checking out. Steele isn't very bright, and he made a fool out of himself on the air.

It started when Steele endorsed increased government regulation of the private insurance market.

INSKEEP: Wait, wait -- you would trust the government to look into that?

STEELE: No, I'm talking about the private -- I'm talking about citizens. I'm talking about -- (CROSSTALK)

INSKEEP: Who is it you -- you said it is something that should be looked into. Who is it that you think should look into that?

STEELE: Well, who regulates the insurance markets?

INSKEEP: That would be the government, I believe.

STEELE: Well, and so what. Now wait a minute. Hold up. You're doing a wonderful little dance here and you're trying to be cute. But the reality of this is very simple. I'm not saying the government doesn't have a role to play. I've never said that. The government does have a role to play; it has a very limited role to play.

INSKEEP: Mr. Chairman, I respect that you think I'm doing a dance here. I just want you to know that as a citizen, I'm a little confused by the positions you take because you're giving me a very nice nuanced position here --

STEELE: It's not nice and nuanced. I'm being very clear.

As David Kurtz concluded, "Hard to believe this guy really is the head of a major American political party."

There were several candidates seeking the RNC chairmanship this year. The party chose the most ridiculous, least qualified, most confused one. That Steele reflects poorly on the party, its agenda, and its ability to be serious about public policy is a dramatic understatement.

THE GOP'S LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE STIMULUS.... It's a bit like listening to Gollum talk about his precious ring. Bobby Jindal hates the recovery package; Bobby Jindal loves the recovery package. Mitch McConnell hates the recovery package; Mitch McConnell loves the recovery package. Eric Cantor hates the recovery package; Eric Cantor loves the recovery package.

There's a lot of this going around.

Georgia's Republican senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, voted against the $787 billion economic stimulus package, blasting the bill as a bloated government giveaway.

But their disdain didn't stop them from later asking Defense Secretary Robert Gates to steer $50 million in stimulus money to a constituent's bio-energy project.

Gates didn't do it, but Chambliss, Isakson and other Republican opponents of the stimulus aren't going empty-handed.

Billions of dollars worth of Defense Department stimulus money is paying for repairs and construction at military installations in areas represented by lawmakers who said "no" to the legislation, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

The request from Chambliss and Isakson isn't the only one Gates and other top defense officials received before and after President Barack Obama signed the stimulus law in February. Their pitch stands out, though, because of the GOP's staunch opposition.

It's a familiar pattern. Republicans aggressively opposed the stimulus proposal earlier this year, insisting that it was a wasteful effort that couldn't possibly improve the economy (as opposed to, say, a five-year spending freeze, which would have worked wonders). Ever since, however, the conservative lawmakers who trashed the recovery bill are the same conservative lawmakers who think the economy in their area could really use some of those recovery funds.

This started within a couple of weeks of the stimulus package passing, and it's only become more common since.

The DCCC has even come up with a "Hypocrisy Hall of Fame" for recovery critics who are "celebrating the benefits of President Obama's economic recovery bill in their districts."

The campaign committee probably ought to save room for a lot of inductees.

ROMNEY FOR SENATE?.... Whether Massachusetts law is changed or not, the state will host a special election in January to fill the vacancy left by Sen. Edward Kennedy. It's likely that Massachusetts will elect a Democrat, but it's also likely that Republicans will at least field a candidate.

And who might that candidate be? U.S. News' Peter Roff has a former one-term governor in mind.

Surprisingly enough, this brings things back full circle to [Mitt] Romney, who up to now has been busy laying the groundwork for another presidential bid in 2012. It would be an intriguing thing if, after waiting a day or two out of respect for the late senator, Romney were to downshift and announce he will be a candidate in the upcoming election to fill Kennedy's vacant Senate seat.

Such an announcement would likely be embraced immediately by the Republicans, who would like almost nothing more than to deny Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada his new, hard-won, 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority. As a self-funding candidate who has already been elected once statewide, Romney has nearly 100 percent name ID. And, in an environment where President Obama seems to be dragging the Democrats down, he would be a serious threat to the Democratic hegemony in Massachusetts's congressional delegation. Meaning Romney likely would win.

In Roff's fantasy scenario, Romney could serve a couple of years, dazzle Republicans with his ideas, and then parlay his Senate service into the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. It's not just Roff -- National Review's Lisa Schiffren likes the idea, too.

This is certainly an ... what's the word ... imaginative proposal. But I don't think it's especially realistic.

First, Romney ran for governor in Massachusetts as a center-left, pro-choice, tolerant New England Republican. He left office after just one term as a conservative with an approval rating in the 30s. Which version of Romney would run for Kennedy's seat? He couldn't run to the right; he'd lose. He couldn't run to the left; it would ruin his presidential ambitions.

Second, Roff may have missed it, but while President Obama's approval ratings aren't as strong as they were, he maintains a 73% approval rating in Massachusetts. It doesn't look as if the Bay State would be anxious to replace Ted Kennedy with a harsh, reflexive opponent of the White House.

And third, by all appearances, Mitt Romney isn't actually a resident of Massachusetts.

Other than these minor details, though, it's a great idea. Run, Mittster, run.

LOOKING FOR A 'GREAT WHITE HOPE'.... Let's call this another setback for the Republican Party's outreach to minority communities.

U.S. Rep. Lynn Jenkins offered encouragement to conservatives at a town hall forum that the Republican Party would embrace a "great white hope" capable of thwarting the political agenda endorsed by Democrats who control Congress and President Barack Obama.

Jenkins, a Topeka Republican in her first term in Congress, shared thoughts about the GOP's political future during an Aug. 19 forum at Fisher Community Center in the northeast Kansas community of Hiawatha.

At the event, an attendee asked Jenkins about whether the Republican Party might put together a policy blueprint, along the lines of the Contract with America. "Republicans are struggling right now to find the great white hope," Jenkins responded. "I suggest to any of you who are concerned about that, who are Republican, there are some great young Republican minds in Washington." She proceeded to single out Reps. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). All three are white, as is Jenkins.

The Topeka Capital-Journal noted the historical context: "The phrase 'great white hope' is frequently tied to racist attitudes permeating the United States when heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson fought in the early 1900s. Reaction to the first black man to reign as champion was intense enough to build support for a campaign to find a white fighter capable of reclaiming the title from Johnson."

Hmm, I wonder why that might be relevant right now.

A spokesperson for the freshman GOP Kansan said "great white hope" was not intended to express a preference for any "race, creed or any background." A statement from the lawmaker's office said Jenkins "apologizes for her choice of words."

DON'T APPLAUD SELF-DESCRIBED 'TERRORISTS'.... Rep. Wally Herger (R) of California, a right-wing back-bencher who rarely generates national attention, held a town-hall event last week, in which he described health care reform as a "threat to our democracy."

But what turned out to be the most newsworthy aspect of the event was a comment from one of the attendees, who declared, "I am a proud right-wing terrorist." The Republican congressman said with a broad smile, "Amen, God bless you. There is a great American."

There's now a video of the remarks. For those of you who can't watch clips from your work computers, the man, whose name is apparently Bert Stead, sounds like a mild-mannered Tea Bagger, repeating fairly predictable nonsense. Government is bad, health care reform is bad, Obama is bad, birth certificates are good, yada, yada, yada. He comes across as the pleasant-but-annoying right-wing relative who sends a bunch of weird emails to his family members.

But he also says, to great applause, that he considers himself a "proud right-wing terrorist." And Wally Herger thought that was great.

In my heart of hearts, do I really think Bert Stead is a violent lunatic? No. Is he likely to encourage others to commit acts of political violence? I seriously doubt it. The guy probably called himself a "terrorist" because he's bought into the nonsense he's been fed about the Department of Homeland Security report(s) on extremists.

But there's a larger context to consider. The threat of political violence is real. Right-wing activists are showing up at presidential events with assault rifles; they're making death threats against members of Congress; and they're painting swastikas on lawmakers' signs. By one count, threats against the president are up 400%.

Conservative David Frum recently went so far as to accuse the "reckless right" of courting violence, imploring the right to "tone down the militant and accusatory rhetoric."

And it's against this backdrop that Republican lawmakers are hearing dangerous rhetoric from their own constituents. In Iowa the other day, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) heard from one town-hall attendee, "The president of the United States, that's who you should be concerned about. Because he's acting like a little Hitler. I'd take a gun to Washington if enough of you would go with me."

Around the same time, Bert Stead boasted about labeling himself a terrorist. The appropriate response for a reasonable elected official is not to cheer the guy on.

Abraham Lincoln Ella Wheeler Wilcox* once said, "To sit in silence when we should protest makes cowards out of men." Wally Herger is Exhibit A.

Update: Herger doubles down, reiterating his praise.

Second Update: I was fairly sure the quote was Lincoln's, but Mark Kleiman emails with proof it's from Wilcox.

WEDNESDAY'S MINI-REPORT.... Today's edition of quick hits:

* In a bit of a surprise, new U.S. home sales jumped 9.6% in July, beating analysts' expectations for the fourth straight month.

* The Cash for Clunkers program wrapped up this week, and led to nearly 700,000 new car sales. The program, which most have deemed a success, came in under its $3 billion budget.

* South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's (R) troubles got worse today when Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer (R) urged Sanford to resign, and vowed not to seek another term if the governor would finally step down. Sanford said he would not be "railroaded" out of office.

* If Massachusetts lawmakers are still willing to change the process for replacing U.S. senators, Gov. Deval Patrick (D) would sign a bill into law.

* Funeral arrangements were announced today for Edward Kennedy. He will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, just 95 feet south of the area where his older brothers, President John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, were laid to rest.

* Vice President Biden delivered a heartfelt tribute to Kennedy today. The two served together for nearly four decades.

* The Vietnam Veterans of America, a national advocacy group, is not at all impressed with the vile, right-wing "death book" attacks.

* Betsy McCaughey continues to be poison for the political discourse.

* Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh are no better.

* In light of President Obama's decision to re-nominate Ben Bernanke at the Fed, James K. Galbraith's piece in the new issue of the Monthly is all the more significant.

* You know that attack on the Colorado Democratic Party Headquarters? The initial reports suggested it was the work of enraged right-wing activists. There may be more to it than that.

* It looks like Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) is going for the full "birther" after all.

* And, as the anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina disaster approaches, right-wing radio host Neal Boortz today referred to the victims of the story as human "debris." You stay classy, conservatives.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

DON'T USE KENNEDY AS AN EXCUSE FOR FAILURE.... It started in earnest several days ago, before we knew the state of Ted Kennedy's condition. Conservative senators like Orrin Hatch and John McCain said Kennedy's absence from the Senate this year made bipartisan health care reform less likely. As the argument goes, Kennedy didn't mind reaching out to the GOP and compromising on his principles, unlike these other Democrats. Kennedy, they say, could have gotten a deal done.

It's a weak, and borderline offensive, argument. For one thing, characterizing Kennedy as the kind of leader who sold out liberal ideals for the sake of routine compromise is just wrong. For another, Senate Dems have reached out to Republicans, and the party has made it clear it opposes reform. For conservatives to suggest Kennedy could have persuaded them to embrace the opposite position is a cheap and cowardly cop-out.

Indeed, Edward Kennedy was in the Senate for nearly five decades, and passing health care reform was the cause of his life. If senators like Hatch and McCain were seriously open to the idea of passing reform, and Kennedy really had the ability to persuade conservative lawmakers to embrace a progressive policy, it would have produced a bipartisan reform plan a long time ago. That never happened.

But as today has progressed, Republicans have been slowly but deliberately using Kennedy's passing as an excuse for failure. Reform could have passed this year, they say, if only Kennedy had been up to it.

National Journal's John Mercurio wrote today:

Worried that they'll ultimately be viewed as the party that blocked meaningful reform, [Republicans] are using Kennedy as a convenient foil. If only he had been here, they say, Kennedy would have used his magic touch to reach a meaningful compromise, bringing us on board. That sounds awfully nice, but it's still hard to believe that Republicans, 47 percent of whom believe the Democratic bill includes "death panels," would somehow roll over and obey the man they publicly demonized for decades.

Jamison Foser took this a little further.

According to McCain, had Kennedy been active in Senate negotiations, he would have made "the right concessions." And what is the key concession Republicans like McCain have been demanding? The elimination of a public option. By McCain's telling, there is no health care agreement because Senate Democrats haven't dropped the public plan like Kennedy would have.

Hatch made much the same claim on NBC's Meet the Press last Sunday, saying of Kennedy "the first thing he would have done would have been to call me and say, 'Let's work this out.' And we would work it out so that the best of both worlds would work" -- then adding "I would never go to a federal government program. If we do that, we'll bankrupt the country."

So Hatch, like McCain, claims that Kennedy would have gotten an agreement done by dropping the public plan.

Republicans may be, as Mecurio says, using Kennedy's absence to "humanize themselves" -- but they're also using it to subtly bash Senate Democrats for not dropping the public plan, as they claim Kennedy would have done. Whether that is accurate, fair, or in good taste is for others to decide. But it is the clear meaning of their statements.

For the record, Kennedy supported the public option. Indeed, there's no great mystery here -- he helped write the bill that was approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. If anyone wants to throw their backing to what Kennedy supported, there's his bill. It currently enjoys exactly zero GOP supporters in either chamber.

Would he have traded away the public option to garner broader support? I have no idea. But let's not ignore what we've seen -- a member of the Senate Republican leadership has said, publicly and on the record, that Democrats could produce a deficit-neutral reform bill with no public option and the GOP would still oppose it. Kennedy would have made "the right concessions"? The White House has already signaled a willingness to give away the store, and Republicans slapped the president's hand away anyway.

Republicans oppose health care reform. That's their right. They shouldn't blame Ted Kennedy's absence and death for their obstinacy.

STEELE, PEARLSTEIN, AND DECIDING NOT TO SUFFER FOOLS GLADLY.... It usually goes unsaid, but one of the more common frustrations felt by supporters of health care reform is the sheer idiocy of so many of the effort's critics. It's fairly routine to hear proponents, in unguarded moments, sigh with a touch of indignation, "My God, we're surrounded by liars and fools.*"

Earlier this month, for example, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Steven Pearlstein, unable to contain his disgust, explained, "The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems. "

That was on August 6; the discourse has deteriorated further since, and the capacity of our political system to maintain a half-way reasonable debate has all but fallen apart. As evidence, consider RNC Chairman Michael Steele's truly vile efforts this week. Pearlstein went over Steele's Medicare arguments in detail and seemed amazed by how ridiculous they are.

After reading his broadside, one is left wondering exactly what health reform plan Steele thought he was attacking. At one point, Steele claims that Democrats would prevent Americans from keeping their doctors or an insurance plan they like. Later, he warns that government will soon be setting caps on how many heart surgeries could be performed in the United States each year. Where is he getting this stuff? Has the chairman of the Republican Party somehow gotten hold of a top-secret plan for a government takeover of the health-care system that GOP operatives snatched during a break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters?

If all that sounds spurious and unsubstantiated, it is. And like many of the overstated claims in this column, its purpose is to highlight the lies, distortions and political scare tactics that Steele and other Republicans have used to poison the national debate over health reform.

Have you no shame, sir? Have you no shame?

Steven, I feel your pain.

* edited for clarity

WAITING PATIENTLY FOR SANITY.... It's hard not to watch a clip like this and think that Fox News' Glenn Beck really is deranged.

Here we have a highly-paid, self-described "rodeo clown" scrawling nonsense on a chalk board, concocting bizarre conspiracy theories. Watching the clip, it's tempting to feel kind of sorry for Beck, the same way one might feel sympathy for a man shouting bizarre conspiracy theories on a street corner, scrawling nonsense on a cardboard box.

But here's the kicker: former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) has seen Beck's lunacy, and she's extremely impressed, lauding the Fox News lunatic for doing an "extraordinary job" this week.

"FOX News' Glenn Beck is doing an extraordinary job this week walking America behind the scenes of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and outlining who is actually running the White House," Palin wrote on Facebook. The strange former governor proceeded to encourage "all my friends to watch" Beck's show.

That's right -- Sarah Palin has begun doing promotional work for a deranged television personality.

I so desperately wish Republicans could become sensible again. As Joe Klein asks, "How can you sustain a democracy if one of the two major political parties has been overrun by nihilists?"

Or as Michelle Cottle recently wrote, "I have given up hope for a loyal opposition. I'd settle for a sane one."

MISTAKE OF THE DAY.... Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R) of Utah argued yesterday that the discouraging long-term deficit figures are a serious problem -- that shouldn't be blamed on a certain former president. "It's not George W. Bush's fault," Chaffetz said, adding that "this 'credit card Congress' bears responsibility."

That's one way to look at it, but let's also note reality. The Center for American Progress' Michael Ettlinger and Michael Linden took a closer look at the mid-season review and explains that the "real story is ... fairly obvious."

From their report: "The policies of the Bush administration, which included tax cuts during a time of war and a floundering economy, are clearly the primary source of the current deficits. The Obama administration policies that are beginning to give the economy a needed jumpstart -- the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in particular -- place a distant third in contributing to the 2009 and 2010 deficit numbers."

Even Chaffetz should be able to understand this. Bush approved tax cuts, but didn't pay for them. Bush expanded Medicare, but didn't pay for it. Bush launched two expensive wars, but didn't pay for them. Bush took a quarter-trillion-dollar surplus, and then handed off a $1.3 trillion deficit to his successor. "It's not George W. Bush's fault"? C'mon.

The Ettlinger/Linden analysis found that 40% of the fiscal deterioration we're seeing -- the single largest contributing factor -- can be attributed to Bush policies. Another 12% comes from Bush's financial rescues, while 20% are the result of the economic crisis.

What's President Obama's share? Just 16% of the total, most of which is the result of new spending that was necessary to prevent a depression.

Chaffetz wants to make sure Bush isn't held responsible for the budget mess. He's a shallow partisan, so that's predictable. But if Bush isn't to blame, I suppose Chaffetz would have us believe that lawmakers who backed Bush's policies are to blame?

Chaffetz, in other words, is pinning the budget mess on his Republican colleagues. He probably hasn't thought this one through.

ENZI EXPLAINS HIS APPROACH TO NEGOTIATIONS.... Sen. Mike Enzi (R) of Wyoming, one of the Senate Finance Committee's Gang of Six, hosted a town-hall meeting on Monday in which most of his constituents urged him to drop out of the negotiations.

One constituent said he was bothered by President Obama's praise of Enzi, and said the far-right senator has a duty to terminate discussions on reform. Enzi responded by explaining his approach to the negotiations.

"If I hadn't been involved in this process as long as I have and to the depth as I have, you would already have national health care," he said.

"Someone has to be at the table asking questions," Enzi said, showing a flash of passion.

He later quoted a favorite saying: "If you're not at the table, you're on the menu."

"It's not where I get them to compromise, it's what I get them to leave out," Enzi said.

This comes less than a week after Enzi told Roll Call that he's prepared to vote against his own compromise bill, if that's what the Republican Party wants.

Ryan Grim interpreted Enzi's remarks by concluding that the senator "told a Wyoming town hall crowd that he had no plans to compromise with Democrats and was merely trying to extract concessions." That seems like a reasonable reading of the remarks. Sure, Enzi may have been playing to the right-wing crowd a bit, but he nevertheless conceded publicly that his principle goal in the Gang of Six talks is to weaken the bill and force concessions from Democrats.

In order for negotiations to make any sense, participants have to be willing to engage in good faith. Is there anyone in their right mind who sitll thinks Enzi is committed to finding a bipartisan solution to health care reform?

As Krugman recently explained: "The central fact of the health care debate is that there is essentially no agreement on anything -- values, philosophy, vision of how the world works -- between the two sides. Progressives want universal coverage, and see an expanded government role as essential to getting there. Conservatives believe, in the face of all evidence, that free markets are the answer. And Enzi is very conservative. According to Vote View, my site for left-right rankings, Enzi was the 8th most conservative Senator in the last Congress -- almost in the same league as Inhofe or DeMint. This is the quest for bipartisanship gone stark raving mad."

BYRD RECOMMENDS RENAMING HEALTH CARE BILL.... Seems like a no-brainer.

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the only senator to have served longer than the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), mourned his friend Wednesday, saying his "heart and soul weeps."

Byrd said he hoped healthcare reform legislation in the Senate would be renamed in memoriam of Kennedy.

"I had hoped and prayed that this day would never come," Byrd said in a statement. "My heart and soul weeps at the lost of my best friend in the Senate, my beloved friend, Ted Kennedy."

Byrd's wistful statement focused on the work accomplished with Kennedy during decades together in the Senate, and called on the healthcare bill before Congress to be renamed in honor of Kennedy.

"In his honor and as a tribute to his commitment to his ideals, let us stop the shouting and name calling and have a civilized debate on health care reform which I hope, when legislation has been signed into law, will bear his name for his commitment to insuring the health of every American," Byrd said.

I don't imagine changing the name of the bill to honor Kennedy will necessarily change the equation, but it would be a gracious gesture.

QUOTE OF THE DAY.... Even by the standards of a House Republican, this is a strange argument.

While Americans should honor the legacy of the Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Republicans won't allow healthcare reform to proceed in the late senator's honor, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) said Wednesday.

"Certainly people honor Sen. Ted Kennedy for all of his work," Hensarling, a top House Republican, said during an appearance on CNBC. "But at the end of the day, this is a democracy, and I think the voice of the people have [sic] been heard quite loudly in the month of August."

Hensarling said health care reform should die "if anybody's listening to the American people."

I can find some of this compelling. "This is a democracy." That's a fair observation. In fact, those four words should be on the minds of all lawmakers as the debate continues. Americans voted in November, electing a large Democratic majority in the House, a large Democratic majority in the Senate, and handing a Democratic president a large mandate. With that in mind, if a majority of the House wants health care reform, a majority of the Senate wants reform, and the president wants to sign a reform bill, reform should pass. After all, "at the end of the day, this is a democracy." The "voice of the people" was heard loud and clear on Election Day. If majority rule should carry the day, then health care reform advocates are in good shape.

Hensarling would have us believe that we can't really hear the "voice of the people" by way of national elections. If policymakers are going to follow the latest whims of shifting public attitudes, he argued, they should listen primarily to Tea Baggers and LaRouche cultists. They're a loud minority, and that's what counts.

I suppose it comes down to what kind of "democracy" we're talking about -- the one in which the people's representatives do what they promised voters to do, or the one in which he who throws the biggest temper tantrum wins.

Hensarling prefers the latter. I respectfully disagree.

WEDNESDAY'S CAMPAIGN ROUND-UP....Today's installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn't generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers.

* While the right is targeting House Democrats who supported cap-and-trade legislation in June, four independent groups -- the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, MoveOn and Americans United for Change -- are targeting five House Republicans for opposing the same bill.

* Speaking of ads, the DNC is launching a new radio ad campaign, applauding 13 House Dems for supporting the stimulus package and S-CHIP.

* Last week, New York Gov. David Paterson (D) seemed to suggest that racial bias in the media has played in a role in the criticism of administration. Yesterday, he walked it back.

* Virginia gubernatorial hopeful Creigh Deeds (D) is launching a new radio ad, intended to bolster Deeds' support among African-American voters. The minute-long spot, called "Fired Up," features President Obama's praise for the state senator.

* In California, two new polls show San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom trailing state Attorney General Jerry Brown in the Democratic gubernatorial primary by wide margins. Of particular interest were results showing Newsom trailing Brown in San Francisco, which should be the mayor's strongest area.

* And in Connecticut, Joe Lieberman responded to the possibility that actor Alec Baldwin might run against him in 2012. Lieberman taunted Baldwin on CNN, saying, "Make my day." In a statement, the actor said he has no plans to run for office, but added, "Part of me would hate to see Lieberman go.... There are so few moderate Republicans left in the Senate today."

THE RIGHT REACTS.... It's hard to know what to expect in the way of conservative reactions to Sen. Edward Kennedy's death. The Senate's Lion was something of a boogeyman, but it's safe to assume higher-profile voices on the right would show restraint, at least this morning.

Michelle Malkin, for example, wrote, "There is a time and place for political analysis and criticism. Not now." That seems fair and respectful. She warned, however, about "crass calls to pass the health care takeover to memorialize his death."

Now, I'd argue there's nothing "crass" about honoring the cause of Kennedy's life by passing the bill he helped create, but opinions may vary.

I was more intrigued, however, by this item on National Review's "The Corner," from John J. Pitney Jr. (thanks to reader M.J. for the heads-up)

Ted Kennedy did not go gentle into that good night. He fought for his beliefs as long as he could, and he struggled to stay alive when others might have given up. He and the other Kennedys loved one another and looked out for one another. There was no cost-benefit analysis in their family life, no sense that age, illness, injury, or disability would diminish their value. [emphasis added]

At 7:53 a.m., Kennedy's death elicited a vague reference to death-panel talking points? Seriously?

'ONE OF THE MOST ACCOMPLISHED AMERICANS EVER TO SERVE OUR DEMOCRACY'.... The White House issued a statement on Sen. Edward Kennedy's death overnight, but President Obama also spoke this morning in more detail.

"I wanted to say a few words this morning about the passing of an extraordinary leader, Senator Edward Kennedy," the president said. "Over the past several years, I've had the honor to call Teddy a colleague, a counselor, and a friend. And even though we have known this day was coming for some time now, we awaited it with no small amount of dread.

"Since Teddy's diagnosis last year, we've seen the courage with which he battled his illness. And while these months have no doubt been difficult for him, they've also let him hear from people in every corner of our nation and from around the world just how much he meant to all of us. His fight has given us the opportunity we were denied when his brothers John and Robert were taken from us: the blessing of time to say thank you -- and goodbye.

"The outpouring of love, gratitude, and fond memories to which we've all borne witness is a testament to the way this singular figure in American history touched so many lives. His ideas and ideals are stamped on scores of laws and reflected in millions of lives -- in seniors who know new dignity, in families that know new opportunity, in children who know education's promise, and in all who can pursue their dream in an America that is more equal and more just -- including myself.

"The Kennedy name is synonymous with the Democratic Party. And at times, Ted was the target of partisan campaign attacks. But in the United States Senate, I can think of no one who engendered greater respect or affection from members of both sides of the aisle. His seriousness of purpose was perpetually matched by humility, warmth, and good cheer. He could passionately battle others and do so peerlessly on the Senate floor for the causes that he held dear, and yet still maintain warm friendships across party lines.

"And that's one reason he became not only one of the greatest senators of our time, but one of the most accomplished Americans ever to serve our democracy.

"His extraordinary life on this earth has come to an end. And the extraordinary good that he did lives on. For his family, he was a guardian. For America, he was the defender of a dream.

"I spoke earlier this morning to Senator Kennedy's beloved wife, Vicki, who was to the end such a wonderful source of encouragement and strength. Our thoughts and prayers are with her, his children Kara, Edward, and Patrick; his stepchildren Curran and Caroline; the entire Kennedy family; decades' worth of his staff; the people of Massachusetts; and all Americans who, like us, loved Ted Kennedy."

MCCAIN FORGETS THAT THE GROUNDWORK HAS BEEN LAID.... Yesterday, John McCain told a town-hall gathering in Arizona -- and viewers of CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, which collectively aired road-block coverage -- about his fears of reconciliation. The conservative senator said he's "unalterably opposed" to health care reform passing under reconciliation, calling it a "drastic change."

Faiz Shakir flagged this clip of Fox News' Shep Smith who noted that Republicans used reconciliation many times when they were in the majority. Smith read a Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) quote from 2005: "Reconciliation is a rule of the Senate (that) has been used before for purposes exactly like this on numerous occasions... Is there something wrong with majority rules? I don't think so... The point, of course, is this: If you have 51 votes for your position, you win."

Smith added if the Senate Democratic majority decided to pursue reform under reconciliation, "they could do that."

I would just add that while McCain is "unalterably opposed" this "drastic change," he said something very different in March. Speaking at a conservative think tank, McCain acknowledged Republicans' use of reconciliation, and conceded it might come back to haunt them now.

"I fully recognize that Republicans have in the past engaged in using reconciliation to further the party's agenda," McCain said. "I wish it had not been done then, and I hope it will not be done now that the groundwork has been laid."

Reconciliation has been applied to everything from health insurance portability (COBRA) to nursing home standards, Medicaid eligibility to the EITC, welfare reform to S-CHIP, tax cuts to student loans. When the Senate parliamentarian disagreed with Republicans' use of reconciliation, the GOP caucus fired him. When another parliamentarian got in the way, he was fired, too.

With the Senate Democratic caucus now at 59 seats -- a total that will likely remain unchanged until mid-January -- Republicans shouldn't be too surprised to see the new majority walking through the door the old majority opened.

Update: Last night, McCain was on Fox News and said use of reconciliation would set a "terrible precedent" that would "blow up" the Senate. He added, "I think it would fundamentally change the way the institution functions."

Funny, McCain didn't feel that way at all in March -- or when he was in the majority.

KENNEDY'S UNFINISHED WORK.... Obviously, under the circumstances, much of the political world will honor Sen. Edward Kennedy today, and mourn his passing. It's unlikely we'll hear politicians or people in positions of authority openly speculating on the implications of the Senate's greatest lawmaker passing before the cause of his life could be completed.

But it won't be long before talk of Kennedy's unrivaled legacy shifts to Kennedy's unfinished work. Greg Sargent noted this morning, "It's tempting to imagine that his death could prod the Senate into action on health care reform. It would be an extraordinary, and perhaps fitting, historical irony if Kennedy's death provided the final moral impetus to accomplish one of the primary causes to which he dedicated his life."

It's tempting, indeed. Noam Scheiber wrote over the weekend, before any of us knew any details about the senator's condition, about the likely political consequences of the Liberal Lion's passing.

...If Kennedy were to pass away in the next few months, the Senate math on any health care vote would almost certainly get easier, not harder. For one thing, it would single-handedly make the magic number 51 votes, not 60, since it would be suicidal for the GOP to filibuster the culmination of the last Kennedy brother's lifelong crusade. Beyond that, I suspect the coverage of Kennedy's death would silence healthcare reform critics and boost proponents in a way that netted at least a couple of wavering moderates -- so clearing the 51-vote threshold wouldn't be a problem. Heck, you might even see Utah Republican (and longtime Kennedy friend) Orrin Hatch back in the reformist camp.

So all the maneuvering around Kennedy's hypothetical replacement strikes me as unnecessary at best and possibly even counterproductive, since it could only detract from what would otherwise be a powerful (and authentic) emotional outpouring in the event of Kennedy's passing.

I would love to believe this is correct. Honestly, I would. And it's possible that honorable lawmakers are capable of more humanity than I give them credit for.

Time will tell.

FILLING THE KENNEDY VACANCY.... Replacing Sen. Edward Kennedy is, to a certain extent, impossible. Nevertheless, his death leaves a vacancy in the Senate.

Just last week, Kennedy encouraged lawmakers in Massachusetts to change state law and empower Gov. Deval Patrick to immediately name an interim senator until a special election could be held. With so much on the line, Kennedy, like everyone else, realized the dangers of leaving the Senate Democratic caucus with 59 votes for five months.

What's going to happen? The prospects are discouraging.

In the week before his death, reaction to his request on Beacon Hill ranged from muted to hostile. The state's Democrats found themselves in the awkward position of being asked to reverse their own 2004 initiative calling for special elections in such instances.

Until that year, Massachusetts law called for the governor to appoint a temporary replacement if a Senate seat became vacant. But when Senator John Kerry, a Democrat, was running for president in 2004, the Democratic-controlled state legislature wanted to deny the governor at the time -- Mitt Romney, a Republican -- the power to name a successor if Mr. Kerry won. The resulting law requires a special election within 145 to 160 days after the vacancy occurs. [...]

Even if Mr. Kennedy's death prompts a change of heart, the state legislature is not set to return until after Labor Day.

Politico reported this morning, "[I]t appears for now that Massachusetts will be without a second senator until a special election can be held early next year.... Under the 2004 law, the governor must set a special election to fill a vacant Senate seat between 145 and 160 days after the vacancy occurs - meaning, in this case, that a special election would be held in the second half of January 2010."

All of this is of the utmost importance, of course, because of a possible vote this year on health care reform, a fight Kennedy described as "the cause of my life." The prospects of overcoming Republican obstructionism were difficult enough, but with 59 votes in the Democratic caucus, defeating a GOP filibuster may prove impossible, which in turn makes the reconciliation option more appealing.

One alternative is that Republicans could allow the Senate to vote on health care reform, and let majority rule dictate the outcome (the way the Senate operated for generations). Another alternative is that just one or two of Kennedy's close, personal friends in the Senate's GOP caucus could honor his memory, put dignity above partisanship, vote for cloture, and not let Kennedy's death kill the cause of his life.

The chances of either of these alternatives occurring are remote.

KENNEDY.... Sen. Edward Kennedy died late last night at the age of 77. The greatest legislator of his generation, and one of the giants of Senate history, Kennedy will be remembered for an unrivaled legacy that has touched the lives of the nation and the world.

The White House issued a statement from President Obama this morning.

"Michelle and I were heartbroken to learn this morning of the death of our dear friend, Senator Ted Kennedy.

"For five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health and economic well being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts.

"I valued his wise counsel in the Senate, where, regardless of the swirl of events, he always had time for a new colleague. I cherished his confidence and momentous support in my race for the Presidency. And even as he waged a valiant struggle with a mortal illness, I've profited as President from his encouragement and wisdom.

"An important chapter in our history has come to an end. Our country has lost a great leader, who picked up the torch of his fallen brothers and became the greatest United States Senator of our time."

In the New York Times report on Kennedy's passing, John Broder wrote, "[H]e was more than a legislator. He was a living legend."

Exactly one year ago yesterday, Kennedy delivered one last national address, making a surprise appearance at the Democratic National Convention. Despite his ailments, Kennedy's voice still boomed: "There is a new wave of change all around us, and if we set our compass true, we will reach our destination -- not merely victory for our party, but renewal for our nation. And this November, the torch will be passed again to a new generation of Americans. So with Barack Obama, and for you and for me, our country will be committed to his cause. The work begins anew. The hope rises again. And the dream lives on."

A leader, a statesman, and a hero, the irreplaceable Ted Kennedy will be missed.

TUESDAY'S MINI-REPORT.... Today's edition of quick hits:

* Afghanistan: "Five car bombs detonated in a single simultaneous blast Tuesday in Afghanistan's largest southern city, flattening of buildings and killing at least 41 people, officials said. In other violence, four U.S. servicemen were killed by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, making 2009 the deadliest year for the growing contingent of foreign troops since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001."

* Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) sounds very discouraged about health care reform's prospects: "We're headed in the direction of doing absolutely nothing, and I think that's unfortunate."

* Consumer confidence is looking a little better.

* On the CIA Inspector General Report, read Glenn, publius, and Michael Scherer.

* Is half a torture investigation better than none at all? Dahlia Lithwick ponders.

* John McCain today told supportive constituents today that President Obama supports the Constitution. The senator was roundly booed for the comment.

* On a related note, McCain's discussion with constituents was aired live on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. I don't know why.

* Obama's FCC will enforce net neutrality and vowed to go after companies that violate its tenets.

* South Carolina Republicans continue to weigh impeachment against Gov. Mark Sanford (R).

* The result of our public discourse: "A 'vandalism spree' hit the Colorado Democratic Party headquarters in Denver today, where the 'vandal allegedly used a hammer to smash' 11 windows."

* Rush Limbaugh thinks the president might be after his genitalia.

* Utah State Sen. Chris Buttars (R) sure does seem to hate gay people.

* Sean Hannity invited a guest onto his program last night to complain about comparisons between right-wing activists and "brown shirts." The guest proceeded to compare the Democratic agenda to "National Socialism" and accuse administration officials of having swastikas on their arms.

* When it comes to ratings, Fox News is a great success. Fox Business Network is, at least for now, a colossal failure.

* And finally, there was a lengthy discussion yesterday on "Fox & Friends" about whether the Republican effort to sink health care reform is a "conspiracy theory." I'm fairly certain they weren't kidding.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

BINGAMAN ENDORSES PROSPECT OF RECONCILIATION.... Of all the members of the Finance Committee's Gang of Six, Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico seems to be saying the least. While we've heard plenty of erratic and antagonistic remarks from the likes of Chuck Grassley and Mike Enzi, Bingaman has kept an extremely low profile.

Ryan Grim reports that Bingaman raised a few eyebrows when he conceded he would support using reconciliation, if necessary, to pass health care reform.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico has been one of three Democrats participating in the widely-watched Finance Committee negotiations. His willingness to consider reconciliation is another sign that a genuine bipartisan deal may be impossible.

"We made a provision in the budget resolution [earlier this year] that it could be used to try to enact health care provisions related to health care reform," Bingaman said. "There are restrictions to what you can include in that...but I would support it if that's the only way."

Non-budget-related items typically can't be passed using reconciliation, but Democrats are eying ways that would allow them to include those provisions, as well. Reconciliation would be a difficult legislative path to walk, but it raises pressure on Republicans who are considering supporting the Democratic effort. If Democrats go it alone, those Republicans, such as Maine's Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins, would be left out of the process.

Bingaman's support of reconciliation was first reported by the New Mexico Independent and can be seen at the one hour mark here.

In the larger context, Bingaman's comments point to more trouble for the Gang of Six talks. Last week, two of the three Republicans in the group said they're prepared to vote against their own compromise if their party disapproves of it. This week, one of the Democrats reiterated his support for a public option, and another signaled his support for reconciliation if/when Gang of Six negotiations fail.

HOUSE REPUBLICAN QUESTIONS AG'S PATRIOTISM.... Attorney General Eric Holder was confronted with evidence of criminal wrongdoing from CIA interrogators who went beyond the legal guidance provided by the Bush administration. Any hopes that conservatives might be pleased by the limited scope of the probe appear to be dashed.

Take, for example, Rep. Peter King (R) of New York, who appears to be in the midst of a wild-eyed, hair-on-fire temper tantrum.

"It's bulls***. It's disgraceful. You wonder which side they're on," he said of the Attorney General's move, which he described as a "declaration of war against the CIA, and against common sense."

"It's a total breach of faith, and either the president is intentionally caving to the left wing of his party or he's lost control of his administration," said King, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Homeland Security and a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. [...]

"You will have thousands of lives that will be lost and the blood will be on Eric Holder's hands," he said.

Asked about officials who allegedly broke the law, King said it doesn't matter because he doesn't think the Geneva Convention "applies to terrorists," and that the line between permissible and impermissible interrogation tactics was "a distinction without a difference" in the Bush era.

Obviously, King isn't especially coherent on the matter. I've read through his comments a few times, trying to understand what on earth he's talking about. It appears that King believes torture isn't torture, the rule of law was on hiatus from 2001 to 2008, accountability and due process are dangerous concepts, and if you disagree with him, you might be un-American.

This is, by the way, the same Peter King who believes authors of torture memos deserve "a medal," and that the United States has "too many mosques."

Remember, House Republicans want this guy to be chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security.

GRASSLEY GIVING UP ON WHITE HOUSE TALKS?.... Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) hosted a conference call with Iowa reports today, and was kind enough to post a transcript of the discussion online. As Chris Harris noted, there was one especially important exchange.

"Senator, I was wondering if you see any light at the end of the tunnel in terms of any type of compromise on health care reform?" a reporter asked. "Do you anticipate there will be some way that you can work that measure out with the administration?" The conservative senator replied:

"I don't think it's going to be possible to work it out with the administration because they're all over the field -- all over the ball park, I guess, as we say.

"And, you know, one weekend, the secretary of HHS is saying you don't have to have a public option. The next day, the administration gets hit from the left, so the Obama says public option is still very, very important to them.

"And you know what public option is? It leads to single-payer, completely government-run health care system and no choice. And we want to preserve choice for our people -- and so, from that standpoint.

"But, yes, I do believe it's possible to reach an agreement. But I have to confess to you to be a little more cautious when I say that now, because I've been out here listening to my constituents." [emphasis added]

Let's put aside the fact that Grassley, after months of negotiations, still doesn't really understand what the public option is all about. Instead, note that Grassley said he doesn't think it's "possible to work it out with the administration," and then he also thinks it is "possible to reach an agreement."

And his complaint is that the White House is "all over the field"?

Chris Harris added, "If the Senator controlling bipartisan negotiations cannot even agree with what he said a mere 15 seconds earlier, how can he be trusted to earnestly work toward a constructive long-term solution for our broken health care system?"

THE CHENEYS, THE MEDIA, AND THE LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY.... For months, Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney were practically everywhere, insisting that there were documents proving the efficacy of Bush-era torture, and demanding that they be declassified and released. Yesterday we saw the materials, and not surprisingly, they don't support the Cheney claims.

Zachary Roth noted this morning, "It's hardly news that Dick Cheney is a liar. But yesterday offered yet another exhibit in the case."

But Greg Sargent does a nice job taking this a little further. Major news outlets -- not just Fox News, but actual, legitimate outlets -- hyped the Cheneys' claims, giving both of them high-profile platforms on a nearly daily basis for several weeks. Will the media be equally aggressive now?

Have the big news orgs really decided that Dick Cheney's previous claims that CIA docs proved torture worked were more newsworthy than what the documents themselves actually do prove?

So far the answer is Yes. While Cheney's original assertions that the docs would prove torture worked garnered reams of stand-alone print and TV coverage, the fact that the docs themselves don't actually prove Cheney's claims was either not covered at all, buried deep in stories, or described in highly hedged language. [...]

To be fair, there was tons of news yesterday. Maybe the news orgs will get around to doing big takeouts on this. But come on, Cheney and his daughter Liz were granted tons of print space and air time to claim for weeks that these docs would prove torture worked. Seems fair to expect aggressive, stand alone stories about what they do -- and don't -- prove in the real world.

As of this morning, the only major outlet to do a stand-alone story on this was ABC News.

This afternoon, Politico ran a piece, but screwed it up by accepting Cheney's baseless spin. CNN also had an item, but ran into the exact same problem.

It's frustrating enough when bogus claims get vastly more attention than the truth, but it's even worse when the facts come out and major outlets are still getting it wrong.

CLASSIC COBURN.... We're probably past the point at which one concerned American asking one question at a single town-hall forum can change the nature of the larger health care debate. But this clip, posted by Zaid Jilani, struck me as both powerful and illustrative.

For those of you who can't watch clips from your work computers, CNN's Rick Sanchez aired an exchange yesterday between a woman desperate for health care assistance and Sen. Tom Coburn (R) of Oklahoma. The woman in the clip struggles to even speak through her tears, but she explains to her right-wing senator that her husband has traumatic brain injuries. Their family's private insurer, she said, won't cover some of his treatments. "We left the nursing home," she said, "and they told us we are on our own." She breaks down, pleading for help.

Coburn's response was fascinating. "Well, I think, first of all, yes, we will help," the senator said. "The first thing we will do is see what we can do individually to help you through our office. But the other thing that's missing in this debate is us as neighbors helping people that need our help."

When that generated some applause, the Oklahoman added, "The idea that the government is the solution to our problems is an inaccurate, a very inaccurate statement."

This struck me as interesting for a few reasons. The first, which Rick Sanchez noted to viewers, is that Coburn said his office would try to help this woman's family, right before saying government isn't the answer. Sanchez asked, "Isn't he the government?"

Second, the idea of "neighbors helping people" sounds very nice, and it's always heartening to see neighbors lend a hand to struggling families. But there are tens of millions of Americans with no health care coverage, and millions more, including this family in Oklahoma, who are under-insured or who will lose their insurance when they need it most. The vast majority of them don't have neighbors who are oncologists, surgeons, nurses, obstetricians, or rehabilitation experts who would be willing to work for free.

Coburn's answer represents mindless, reflexive opposition to government, for opposition's sake. It's a worldview that's as shallow as it is destructive.

Is government intervention always the answer to every societal problem? Of course not. But health care is critically important -- literally, a life-or-death issue -- for just about every single person and family in the country. It's a basic public service -- not unlike police protection, fire departments, roads, or schools -- that every industrialized democracy manages to provide its citizens, expect us, thanks to "leaders" like Coburn and those who share his ideology.

Government, in this case, is obviously the solution. We've left it to the private free market, and it's failed spectacularly, producing a nightmarish system that costs too much and covers too few. The most effective parts of the U.S. health care system -- the VA and Medicare -- just happen to be the two parts intertwined with the government.

I'll never understand the right's obsession with hating the government, but for Coburn to lecture that woman in dire straits about the evils of government intervention in the health care system is callous, cruel, and exactly the kind of twisted thinking policymakers will have to reject to pass real reform.

GRASSLEY DEMANDS PERFECTION.... The Wall Street Journal reports on Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, and the man some Democrats are counting on as the key to "bipartisan" health care reform.

"Government is not a competitor, it's a predator," he said of the public option that has been embraced by key congressional Democrats. "We'd have 120 million people opt out [of private insurance], then pretty soon everyone is in health care under the government and there's no competitor." [...]

In an interview, he vowed not to vote for an "imperfect bill" that includes a public option or gives the government too much control over end-of-life issues.

Now, the claim about a public option moving 120 million people out of the private market is patently false. Grassley's lying, he can't support that claim, and he knows it. That he's going around publicly, calling government a "predator," and repeating obviously false right-wing talking points says a great deal about his commitment to meaningful bipartisan compromise.

But it's that other point that really stands out. Admittedly, it's a partial quote, but the WSJ reported that Grassley "vowed" to oppose "imperfect" legislation. And in this case, "imperfection" means a public option that would compete with private plans and government "control over end-of-life issues."

In what universe is the government seeking "control over end-of-life issues"? The one Grassley is using as a baseless excuse to oppose health care reform.

This "imperfect" line, if accurate, has become par for the course. Liberal Democrats may be in the majority, but if they vow not to vote for an "imperfect bill" -- one that excludes a public option, for example -- they're being stubborn ideologues who are unwilling to compromise. If Chuck Grassley makes the same vow from a different direction, he's a serious lawmaker who can be trusted to negotiate in good faith.

The longer Democrats continue to engage Grassley about reform, the greater the chances of failure. It's as simple as that. This isn't complicated -- Grassley, like his caucus, opposes reform, and based on what he's saying publicly, Grassley is practically begging to be dropped from the negotiating process. At this point, there's no reason to keep bagging one's head against the Iowan's wall.

The Finance Committee has the votes to pass a good bill -- the kind of bill its chairman supported as recently as April. When lawmakers return to the Hill, it will be time to do just that.

STEELE REDISCOVERS HIS OPPOSITION TO MEDICARE.... I really don't understand how Michael Steele is in a position to head a major political party.

Yesterday, the confused RNC chairman wrote an op-ed insisting that Democrats are trying to undermine Medicare. The piece was a disaster for Steele -- not only was every claim in the piece both false and craven, but it offered his detractors a chance to remind folks that Steele personally endorsed Medicare cuts as a statewide candidate in 2006.

It wasn't necessarily surprising -- Steele has already conceded he doesn't know anything about health care policy -- but it was humiliating.

Not quite sharp enough to know how to quit while he's behind, Steele went back to the well today. On Tuesday, the RNC chairman said policymakers must ensure that "we are not cutting the Medicare program." On Wednesday, the same RNC chairman said policymakers must realize that Medicare is "bankrupt" and an example of what not to do with health care.

"The reality of it is, this single-payer program known as Medicare is a very good example of what we should not have happen with all of our health care," said Steele. "The reality of it is, how many times have we been at the trough of bankruptcy and no money for the Medicare program, where Congress is running around like chickens with their head cut off, trying to figure out how to fix a program that they've already mismanaged?

"So now you want to do that, congressman, on a larger scale? You want to include all of us. You're talking about taking our senior population, and expanding it to all of the population? Government cannot run a health care system. they've already shown that. Trust the private markets to do it the right way."

The lights are on, but nobody's home. The same clown who attacked Democrats yesterday for trying to improve Medicare financing just told a national television audience that he disapproves of Medicare and would prefer to "trust the private markets" -- the same private markets that left seniors without coverage, and which made Medicare necessary in the first place.

The GOP's record on Medicare is clearly embarrassing to the party. In the 1960s, Republicans fought against Medicare's existence. In the 1990s, Republicans shut down the federal government because a Democratic president wouldn't tolerate proposed GOP cuts to Medicare. In 2008, the Republican presidential ticket ran on a platform of cutting Medicare.

And in 2009, the chairman of the Republican National Committee has decided, over the course of 24 hours, he's both for and against the Medicare program, for and against Medicare cuts, and for and against privatization.

From there, Steele talked up the ridiculous "death book" lie, either unaware of or unconcerned with reality.

The mind reels.

TUESDAY'S CAMPAIGN ROUND-UP....Today's installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn't generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers.

* Despite the humiliations of his presidential campaign, Rudy Giuliani is moving closer to launching a gubernatorial campaign in New York.

* In a bit of a surprise, former Rep. Bob Beauprez (R) announced that he will not challenge Sen. Michael Bennet (D) in Colorado next year.

* In South Carolina, state Attorney General Henry McMaster (R) kicked off his gubernatorial campaign yesterday. In his announcement, McMaster took a not-so-subtle shot at South Carolina's current governor: "There's been too much dishonesty and too many scandals."

* As if the prospect of a primary challenge weren't enough, Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) is now facing a new round of criticism from the Club for Growth, which is accusing Bennett of not being nearly right-wing enough.

* There's already a large field of Arkansas Republicans anxious to take on Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) next year. But might she also face a Democratic primary challenger?

* Confirming earlier reports, former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton (D) said he's sticking with his plans to take on Rep. Steve Cohen (D) in a primary next year.

BERNANKE GETS FOUR MORE YEARS.... A couple of weeks ago, Kevin Drum hosted a panel discussion at Netroots Nation, and asked progressive participants if they were opposed to reappointing Ben Bernanke for another term as the Fed chairman. No one spoke up. Kevin concluded, "This suggests to me that Bernanke is a shoo-in for winning a second term. If you can't even get a bunch of liberals at Netroots Nation to oppose him, what are the odds that anyone else is going to lead the fight?"

And with that in mind, President Obama interrupted his vacation this morning to announce that he would, in fact, nominate Bernanke for a second term. The NYT noted that the president is "seeking to keep an air of stability in the financial markets as the nation inches toward an economic recovery."

"As an expert on the causes of the Great Depression, I'm sure Ben never imagined that he would be part of a team responsible for preventing another," Mr. Obama said. "But because of his background, his temperament, his courage, and his creativity, that's exactly what he has helped to achieve."

The president interrupted his weeklong vacation to Martha's Vineyard to disclose his decision, which was timed to coincide with the opening of the American financial markets on Tuesday morning. The announcement also came just before the White House released a new projection that the deficit would reach $9 trillion over 10 years.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that this wasn't a coincidence. Bernanke's first term doesn't end until January, and there was no chance he might pull a Palin and walk away early. So why make the announcement on a slow Tuesday morning? Because the administration didn't want the markets freaking out about discouraging deficit projections (more on that later).

Bernanke will, of course, face another round of Senate confirmation hearings. I don't have especially strong feelings about Bernanke getting a second term, and it's probably safe to assume he'll be confirmed with relative ease, but there are some fairly important questions he should be prepared to answer.

That said, Noam Scheiber makes a compelling case for continuity, and argued, "Bernanke has been creative, even highly unorthodox, at precisely the moment when the economy demanded these qualities from the Fed, and when a conservative, by-the-book approach would have likely sent us into a depression."

Tim Fernholz also has a good item this morning: "Ultimately, this is a good short-term pick for today, certainly, as well as the next six months or so of crisis management and the short-term reassurance of the bond markets. Whether or not Bernanke will gain the confidence of Congress and be able to make the tricky calls required to manage monetary policy in a transition to recovery without being held hostage by a single class of investors remains to be seen, but he cannot forget that the decisions he makes about interest rates and his extraordinary lending programs will affect the entire swath of the American economy and particularly unemployment. It's clear that, after whatever conversations the two have had, Obama has confidence that Bernanke is his man."

Update: On a related note, be sure to check out James K. Galbraith's piece in the new issue of the Monthly, "Did Ben Bernanke really save America's financial system?"

THEY REALLY THINK YOU'RE STUPID.... The right's "death panel" attack was thoroughly and completely debunked. It didn't matter -- lots of Americans believed the lie anyway. It has, however, started to lose some of its salience, which means it's time for the new health care reform lie.

We talked over the weekend about the "death books" nonsense. The right-wing claim is that the Department of Veterans Affairs is pushing an end-of-life planning document that encourages vets to pursue death. The claim is completely ridiculous.

But it doesn't matter. The disgusting attack worked its way from Fox News to the Wall Street Journal to CNN. Right-wing hacks are pushing this aggressively, and this morning, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said, "If you want an example of bad public policy, just look at the situation with our veterans when you have a manual out there telling our veterans stuff like 'are you really of value to your community?' You know, encouraging them to commit suicide. I mean, this is crazy coming from the government."

"Crazy" is the operative word here.

We're all accustomed to a certain baseline of dishonesty among opponents of health care reform, but this truly vile. These clowns lost their dignity quite a while ago, but this "death book" stupidity is beneath contempt.

For what it's worth, Olbermann broke down the smear last night, and the Obama administration published a detailed rebuttal to the lurid claim this morning.

Whether the pushback is sufficient remains to be seen. For the right, it's the kitchen-sink strategy -- come up with as many lies as possible, and throw them all at health care reform. When one piece of garbage starts to lose its punch, throw another. Even if it's promptly debunked, plenty of gullible suckers will believe it, and news outlets won't dare say, "Right-wing opponents of reform lie a lot." Indeed, there are no adverse consequences for conservative con artistss at all.

Our political discourse is just so ridiculous, it's sometimes surprising the political system functions at all.

IS THE REFORM BILL TOO LONG?.... The right has come up with plenty of criticisms of health care reform proposals, some more substantive than others. One of the weaker complaints: the legislation is long, and conservatives don't want to read the whole thing.

This is a surprisingly common complaint. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), for example, a Rhodes Scholar and Harvard alum, said last week, "I have a fundamental problem with any 1,000-page bills." A wide variety of his cohorts have raised the same concern.

The usual retort is that bill length is irrelevant to bill quality. The "Harry Potter" books are apparently pretty long, and those who say, "I have a fundamental problem with any 700-page books" come across as kind of silly.

That said, is there anything to these complaints? Is the reform bill unusually long? Not really. Christopher Beam had a good piece on this the other day.

[M]ajor spending bills frequently run more than 1,000. This year's stimulus bill was 1,100 pages. The climate bill that the House passed in June was 1,200 pages. Bill Clinton's 1993 health care plan was famously 1,342 pages long. Budget bills can run even longer: In 2007, President Bush's ran to 1,482 pages.

Over the last several decades, the number of bills passed by Congress has declined: In 1948, Congress passed 906 bills. In 2006, it passed only 482. At the same time, the total number of pages of legislation has gone up from slightly more than 2,000 pages in 1948 to more than 7,000 pages in 2006. (The average bill length increased over the same period from 2.5 pages to 15.2 pages.)

Bills are getting longer because they're getting harder to pass. Increased partisanship over the years has meant that the minority party is willing to do anything it can to block legislation -- adding amendments, filibustering, or otherwise stalling the lawmaking process. As a result, the majority party feels the need to pack as much meat into a bill as it can -- otherwise, the provisions might never get through.

What's more, if you've ever seen the physical page of a bill in Congress, you know that it doesn't look like a traditional printed page. As one of Matt's readers noted yesterday, "Nobody ever mentions that bills have very few words on each page. They're double spaced, there are huge margins, every line is numbered -- it ends up working out to only 150 words a page or so. The HC bill may be long, but it's the equivalent of a 300 or 400-page book, tops."

I suppose there's a reasonable case to be made that shorter bills might be more accessible to the general public, and the typical American won't bother with a 1,000-page bill. Perhaps. But legislation isn't really prepared for a lay audience anyway -- it's often filled with technical and legal jargon, which is necessary for it to be implemented as intended.

Something to keep in mind the next time someone starts whining about the size of the reform bill. There are legitimate concerns about the legislation. This isn't one of them.

CHENEY'S CLAIMS PUT TO THE TEST.... For much of the Spring, Dick Cheney received more than his share of media attention, insisting that there were documents proving the efficacy of Bush-era torture. For the most part, the claims were largely irrelevant -- torture is illegal, it undermines our national security interests, intelligence can be gleaned through legitimate methods, and President Obama disavowed its use.

But Cheney kept pushing, insisting that the administration should declassify pro-torture materials, which would prove that "enhanced interrogations" produced life-saving intelligence. His political allies and a variety of media figures endorsed his demands. Yesterday, the documents were published for the first time, and the former vice president was delighted. Should he have been?

Spencer Ackerman took a closer look.

Strikingly, [the documents] provide little evidence for Cheney's claims that the "enhanced interrogation" program run by the CIA provided valuable information. In fact, throughout both documents, many passages -- though several are incomplete and circumstantial, actually suggest the opposite of Cheney's contention: that non-abusive techniques actually helped elicit some of the most important information the documents cite in defending the value of the CIA's interrogations. [...]

[P]erhaps the blacked-out lines of the memos specifically claim and document that torture and only torture yielded this information. But what's released within them does not remotely make that case. Cheney's public account of these documents have conflated the difference between information acquired from detainees, which the documents present, and information acquired from detainees through the enhanced interrogation program, which they don't.

In a statement, Tom Parker, the policy director of Amnesty International's American branch, said, "Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Vice President Cheney's track record, the two CIA memos released today are hardly the slam dunk we had been led to expect. There is little or no supporting evidence in either memo to give substance to the specific claims about impending attacks made by Khaled Shaik Mohammed in highly coercive circumstances."

Patrick Appel has more, including this conclusion: "The documents are heavily redacted, but nothing we can read refers to torture techniques providing solid information.... It's worth repeating that no one denies torture produces information. It produces loads of information, most of it bad. The same or better information can be collected through other techniques and, again, nothing in these documents compares and contrasts these methods."

Dick Cheney's claims haven't stood up well to scrutiny. Imagine that.

'DESECRATING' 9/11?.... As the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, the White House has designated Sept. 11, 2009 as a "National Day of Service." It seems like an appropriate way to honor the tragedy.

But not to everyone. Matthew Vadum has a piece in the far-right American Spectator, arguing that President Obama's service proclamation is part of a plan to "desecrate" 9/11. In all sincerity, this is not a parody:

The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry.

This effort to reshape the American psyche has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year's election campaign. The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but it's not likely many lawmakers thought this meant that day was going to be turned into a celebration of ethanol, carbon emission controls, and radical community organizing. [...]

The plan is to turn a "day of fear" that helps Republicans into a day of activism called the National Day of Service that helps the left. In other words, nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.

"They think it needs to be taken back from the right," said the source. "They're taking that day and they're breaking it because it gives Republicans an advantage. To them, that day is a fearful day." [...]

With the help of the Obama administration, the coalition is launching a public relations campaign under the radar of the mainstream media -- which remains almost uniformly terrified of criticizing the nation's first black president -- to try to change 9/11 from a day of reflection and remembrance to a day of activism, food banks, and community gardens.

It's hard to know where to start with something like this. There's crazy, and then there's this crazy.

But let's just note a few relevant details. First, George W. Bush called for community volunteer work on the anniversary of 9/11, and the right didn't find it controversial. Second, victims' families have recommended making 9/11 a national day of service for years. Third, Alex Koppelman explained, "Check out the official Web site set up for the day: They're asking people to come up with their own events. So if you don't want to help out at anti-American places like food banks and community gardens, you can organize your own event."

What's more, while the Vadum piece is obviously bizarre, it's also worth remembering that these disturbed ideas were quickly embraced by other far-right bloggers, including Michelle Malkin and another site that argued the president is calling for "mandatory civilian service" as part of Obama's drive to build "his civilian army."

Conservative bloggers pick the strangest things to get excited about.

LIEBERMAN, GOP PREFER TO 'KEEP WALKING'.... It's tempting to think conservative lawmakers would be thrilled with the limited scope of Attorney General Eric Holder's investigation into Bush-era torture. The Justice Department is only looking into about a dozen cases, and will not review the legality of the torture memos or the conduct of anyone who wrote, approved, or followed them.

As investigations go, this one couldn't be much narrower. Indeed, conservatives should, in a sense, be delighted. Holder has evidence pointing to possible criminal wrongdoing, but the investigation will only hold a very small number of people accountable -- none of whom are conservatives' political allies. It's one of the reasons leading Democratic lawmakers are disappointed with the announced probe; the investigation just doesn't go far enough.

Joe Lieberman, who has already publicly endorsed torture policies, doesn't see it that way.

"I respectfully regret this decision by Attorney General Holder and fear our country will come to regret it too because an open ended criminal investigation of past CIA activity, which has already been condemned and prohibited, will have a chilling effect on the men and women agents of our intelligence community whose uninhibited bravery and skill we depend on every day to protect our homeland from the next terrorist attack. [...]

"We cannot take for granted the fact that our homeland has not been attacked since September 11, 2001. That has occurred only because of the constant vigilance and unflinching efforts by those brave individuals in our military, civilian homeland security and counterterrorism agencies, and the intelligence community. These public servants must of course live within the law but they must also be free to do their dangerous and critical jobs without worrying that years from now a future Attorney General will authorize a criminal investigation of them for behavior that a previous Attorney General concluded was authorized and legal."

Any sentence that starts, 'Officials must of course live within the law but..." isn't going to end well.

The complaints went well beyond Lieberman. If the Justice Department pursues evidence of criminal wrongdoing, leading Republican senators and representatives said, "CIA terror fighters" may not be able to do their jobs effectively. Oh, and 9/11, 9/11, 9/11.

It's better, apparently, to have officials break the law and then have the Justice Department ignore the evidence.

I'm reminded of the argument Peggy Noonan made in April against this investigation: "Sometimes in life you want to just keep walking... Sometimes, I think, just keep walking.... Some of life just has to be mysterious."

Notice, there's no real defense for Bush-era actions, either from Noonan or the conservative lawmakers. No one's willing to say that crimes are acceptable. They're only willing to say that accountability for crimes is a problem.

Why? It apparently has something to do with walking.

MONDAY'S MINI-REPORT.... Today's edition of quick hits:

* Hot off the presses: "The Obama administration on Monday released additional portions of a long-classified CIA report on the agency's interrogation of high-level Qaeda detainees. The document contains new allegations of detainee abuse at secret prisons around the world and seems likely to prolong a debate about the legality and effectiveness of employing coercive methods to elicit intelligence from terrorist suspects.... The report, presciently, noted that 'the agency faces potentially serious long-term political and legal challenges as a result of the . . . program, particularly its use of [Enhanced Interrogation Techniques] and the inability of the U.S. Government to decide what it will ultimately do with terrorists detained by the agency.'"

* Afghanistan's Finance Minister, with unofficial results, said President Hamid Karzai has won re-election with 68% support.

* The High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group: "President Obama has approved the creation of an elite team of interrogators to question key terrorism suspects, part of a broader effort to revamp U.S. policy on detention and interrogation, senior administration officials said Sunday." The CIA seems rather pleased with the development.

* The Obama administration has decided to break with Bush-era rules and will notify the International Committee of the Red Cross about the names of detainees held by U.S. Special Operations forces.

* The H1H1 flu vaccination campaign will be "unprecedented in its scope." Preparations include "more than 2,800 local health departments have begun recruiting pediatricians, obstetricians, nurses, pharmacists, paramedics and even dentists, along with a small army of volunteers from churches and other groups."

* Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) says he really does support a public option.

* New twist: health care reform supporter shows up at a public event with a gun.

* On a related note: "Chris Broughton, the man who brought an assault rifle to an Obama event in Arizona earlier this week, and William Kostric, who protested outside a presidential forum in New Hampshire armed with a handgun last week, are both listed as "team members" of the Arizona chapter of the We The People organization."

* A spokesperson for Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) said he will not file a lawsuit challenging the president's citizenship, but the right-wing lawmaker thinks it's "ridiculous" that the president hasn't "produced" his birth certificate. (Franks isn't the sharpest tool in the shed.)

* Michael Tomasky on health care reform and the left: "[L]iberals have to fight hard for something they're not terribly excited about. A health bill will likely have a very weak public option or it won't have one at all. But liberals will have to battle for that bill as if it's life and death (which in fact it will be for thousands of Americans), because its defeat would constitute a historic victory for the birthers and the gun-toters and the Hitler analogists. In the coming weeks, building toward a possible congressional vote in November, progressives will have to get out in force to show middle America that there's support for reform as well as opposition, even though they may find the final bill disappointing."

* How anyone could consider Fred Barnes anything but a sad joke is beyond me.

* The addition of Laura Rozen has instantly made the Politico a stronger publication.

* I'm actually going to miss Slate's "Today's Papers" feature, and think the magazine is making a big mistake by getting rid of it.

* As of this morning, Glenn Beck has lost 33 advertisers.

* Fox News probably shouldn't promote right-wing activist gatherings quite this much. It's almost as if it weren't really a "news" network at all....

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

PREVENTING A CRISIS VS. FIXING A CRISIS.... In most of his recent public speeches and town-hall events, President Obama talks a great deal about health care, but not before setting the stage a bit with some talk about the economy.

"This is obviously a tough time for families all across America," the president tends to say. "Six months ago, we were in the middle of the worst recession of our lifetimes. I want you to remember what things were like in January and February. We were losing about 700,000 jobs per month. And economists of all stripes feared a second-coming of the Great Depression. That was only six months ago. That's why we acted as fast as we could to pass a Recovery Act that would stop the freefall...."

Now, from there, Obama talks up his strategy that prevented an economic catastrophe, before transitioning to the importance of laying a new foundation for future growth -- starting with health care reform. But the implicit message of these introductory remarks always strikes me the same way: the president wants us to know he saved the United States from catastrophic economic consequences, and he'd probably like a little credit for it.

E.J. Dionne Jr. noted today that it's not an easy pitch to make.

The hardest slogan to sell in politics is: "Things could have been a whole lot worse." No wonder President Obama is having trouble defending his stimulus plan.

If governments around the world, including our own, had not acted aggressively -- and had not spent piles of money -- a very bad economic situation would have become cataclysmic.

But because the cataclysm was avoided, this is an invisible achievement. Many whose bacon was saved, particularly in the banking and corporate sectors, do not want to admit how important the actions of government were. Antigovernment ideologues try to pretend that no serious intervention was required.

So everyone goes back to complaining about high deficits and the shortcomings of government as if nothing had happened.

But something did -- we were on the cliff, partially hanging over. The possibility of a full-blown depression was very real. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told Dionne, "This is a case study in bringing the world back from the brink, and it was American leadership from President Obama that was the key to that."

Ezra Klein added, "[T]he Obama administration made the mistake of effectively managing the financial emergency when they entered office. They faced a serious threat, but they never let it become a serious crisis. As such, the normal laws of political gravity never lifted, and everything went on pretty much as normal.... That's to the Obama administration's credit. Serious crises are bad things. It's one of the system's more perverse incentives that you don't get political capital from preventing them so much as pulling the country out of them."

I haven't spoken to anyone at the White House directly about this, but I imagine there are probably a few folks in the West Wing who, in their weaker moments, might admit, "Our guy just prevent Great Depression II! His approval ratings should be huge. The Republicans who voted against the stimulus -- and recommended a five-year spending freeze instead -- ought to be laughed at when appearing in public. After steering the ship away from the abyss, health care reform should be easy."

Alas, it doesn't exactly work that way. The default of the American political system is institutional resistance to change. Cataclysmic disasters open the door wide to systemic change; averted cataclysmic disasters apparently don't.

HOLDER TO APPOINT PROSECUTOR ON BUSH-ERA TORTURE.... We learned in July that Attorney General Eric Holder was leaning towards appointing a special prosecutor to investigate "brutal interrogation practices" from the Bush-era. Today, Holder did exactly that.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has decided to appoint a prosecutor to examine nearly a dozen cases in which CIA interrogators and contractors may have violated anti-torture laws and other statutes when they allegedly threatened terrorism suspects, according to two sources familiar with the move.

Holder is poised to name John Durham, a career Justice Department prosecutor from Connecticut, to lead the inquiry, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process is not complete.

Durham's mandate, the sources added, will be relatively narrow: to look at whether there is enough evidence to launch a full-scale criminal investigation of current and former CIA personnel who may have broken the law in their dealings with detainees. Many of the harshest CIA interrogation techniques have not been employed against terrorism suspects for four years or more.

"Narrow" mandate continues to be the key here. Based on this afternoon's reports, the probe will exclude those who wrote and followed the Bush administration's torture memos. The focus, in other words, will not be on people like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Addington, and Yoo, but rather, lower-level officials. This isn't about whether Bush-era torture memos were legal; this is about whether those who went beyond Bush-era torture memos committed crimes.

Interrogators who worked within the "four corners" of the torture memos will apparently face no scrutiny; those who worked outside of the memos have some explaining to do.

As for Durham, if his name sounds familiar, there's a good reason -- in January 2008, then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey appointed him to investigate whether CIA officials broke the law when interrogation videos of two al Qaeda suspects were destroyed. Based on his c.v., Holder seems like a credible, veteran prosecutor.

Holder's office issued a statement on today's announcement, which appears in full below.

"The Office of Professional Responsibility has now submitted to me its report regarding the Office of Legal Counsel memoranda related to so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. I hope to be able to make as much of that report available as possible after it undergoes a declassification review and other steps. Among other findings, the report recommends that the Department reexamine previous decisions to decline prosecution in several cases related to the interrogation of certain detainees.

"I have reviewed the OPR report in depth. Moreover, I have closely examined the full, still-classified version of the 2004 CIA Inspector General's report, as well as other relevant information available to the Department. As a result of my analysis of all of this material, I have concluded that the information known to me warrants opening a preliminary review into whether federal laws were violated in connection with the interrogation of specific detainees at overseas locations. The Department regularly uses preliminary reviews to gather information to determine whether there is sufficient predication to warrant a full investigation of a matter. I want to emphasize that neither the opening of a preliminary review nor, if evidence warrants it, the commencement of a full investigation, means that charges will necessarily follow.

"Assistant United States Attorney John Durham was appointed in 2008 by then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey to investigate the destruction of CIA videotapes of detainee interrogations. During the course of that investigation, Mr. Durham has gained great familiarity with much of the information that is relevant to the matter at hand. Accordingly, I have decided to expand his mandate to encompass this related review. Mr. Durham, who is a career prosecutor with the Department of Justice and who has assembled a strong investigative team of experienced professionals, will recommend to me whether there is sufficient predication for a full investigation into whether the law was violated in connection with the interrogation of certain detainees.

"There are those who will use my decision to open a preliminary review as a means of broadly criticizing the work of our nation's intelligence community. I could not disagree more with that view. The men and women in our intelligence community perform an incredibly important service to our nation, and they often do so under difficult and dangerous circumstances. They deserve our respect and gratitude for the work they do. Further, they need to be protected from legal jeopardy when they act in good faith and within the scope of legal guidance. That is why I have made it clear in the past that the Department of Justice will not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the Office of Legal Counsel regarding the interrogation of detainees. I want to reiterate that point today, and to underscore the fact that this preliminary review will not focus on those individuals.

"I share the President's conviction that as a nation, we must, to the extent possible, look forward and not backward when it comes to issues such as these. While this Department will follow its obligation to take this preliminary step to examine possible violations of law, we will not allow our important work of keeping the American people safe to be sidetracked.

"I fully realize that my decision to commence this preliminary review will be controversial. As Attorney General, my duty is to examine the facts and to follow the law. In this case, given all of the information currently available, it is clear to me that this review is the only responsible course of action for me to take."

AUGUST BAUCUS VS. APRIL BAUCUS.... Do you want to get really depressed about the debate over health care reform? Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Max Baucus, chairmen of the Senate HELP and Finance Committees, respectively, sent this letter (pdf) to President Obama in April:

"For nearly a year, we have been working together toward the shared goal of significant reforms to our health care system. We must act swiftly, because the cost of inaction is too high for individuals, families, businesses, state and federal governments. Comprehensive health care reform legislation will responsibly contain costs, improve quality, enhance disease prevention, and provide coverage to all Americans. We are committed to working with you, and with our colleagues in Congress, to enact legislation to achieve these long-overdue reforms without delay. We are writing to you today to let you know of the schedule for committee action that we intend to follow to meet this goal.

"Since our committees share jurisdiction over health care reform legislation in the Senate, we have jointly laid out an aggressive schedule to accomplish our goal. Both committees plan to mark-up legislation in early June. Our intention is for that legislation to be very similar, and to reflect a shared approach to reform, so that the measures that our two committees report can be quickly merged into a single bill for consideration on the Senate floor.

"The unprecedented level of funding devoted to health care reform in your budget this year leaves no doubt about your commitment to the goals of expanding coverage, reducing costs, and improving health and health care. We have a moral duty to ensure that every American can get quality health care. We must act to contain the growth of health care costs to ensure our economic stability; to help American businesses deal with the health care challenge; and to make sure that we are getting our money's worth. With your continued leadership and commitment, and working together, we remain certain that our goal of enacting comprehensive health care reform can be accomplished with the urgency that the American people rightly demand." [emphasis added throughout]

Max Baucus really did sign his name to this letter. Indeed, it's often overlooked, but the original plan was to have the Finance Committee bill done first, with swift action immediately thereafter -- which would be easy since the HELP Committee would be on the same page.

It was sent to the White House just four months ago.

Of course, we now know that Baucus' committee a) is going last, if it goes at all; b) barely tried to meet its June deadline; and c) has veered sharply to the right, away from the HELP bill, thanks to the efforts of the Gang of Six, which has placed Republican support for reform above all else.

And while Baucus agreed in April that lawmakers must "act swiftly," "without delay," and "with swift action," Baucus now believes that his own Sept. 15 deadline for his committee -- already three months past the original target date he set for himself -- should be ignored.

Worse, in November, Baucus talked in some detail about the kind of reform bill he wanted to see. His vision included a Health Insurance Exchange, universal coverage, an individual mandate, a public option, and subsidies up to 400% of the poverty line. And he was prepared to deliver it -- after all, as he noted in his letter, he'd been working on it with Kennedy for a year. Baucus, at the time, supported the same kind of reform progressive Democrats now want, but which Baucus' committee won't support due to opposition from the Republican minority.

So, what happened? Kennedy, obviously, fell ill and was unable to complete his work, but Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) capably picked up the slack and delivered an excellent bill, right on time. Baucus, meanwhile, proceeded to take a far different direction in order to work on finding a "bipartisan" solution with conservative members of the discredited minority that doesn't support health care reform.

Can we trade the August Baucus for the April Baucus? Just ask Baucus to recommit himself to the work he'd done before "bipartisanship" became the most important thing?

If so, we'd have a very good shot at a very good bill.

SCHUMER'S THINKING AHEAD.... Time will tell if a good health care reform bill actually becomes law this year, but if it does, I'll be inclined to give Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) a lot of credit. He's been pretty consistent in championing progressive goals; he's been aggressive in speaking out against watering the bill down; he's reminded his colleagues that policy matters more than process; he's been effective on television; and he's been focusing on strategy behind the scenes.

Senator Chuck Schumer is privately urging fellow Dem Senators to aggressively argue in the media that the GOP is wholly committed to blocking reform, in order to lay the political groundwork should Dems have to do reform alone, senior Senate aides confirm to me. [...]

Schumer has also told colleagues he believes political work has to be done in advance to sell "reconciliation" by persuading voters that the GOP is wholly opposed to reform of any kind, aides say. So he's now urging fellow Senators to make the case about GOP obstructionism in a concerted way.

This may seem like common sense, but part of an effective pitch is coordinating a message and laying the rhetorical groundwork. Schumer seems to get this better than most.

Better yet, GOP leaders -- Kyl, Grassley, Enzi -- have given Dems a lot to work with in demonstrating the fact that a bipartisan bill is effectively impossible right now. Greg Sargent's talked to a senior Senate aide who added, "[Schumer] is urging colleagues to emphasize the GOP's role in spreading false myths -- like death panels and illegal immigrants being covered -- and to emphasize GOP statements like Kyl saying he wants ZERO votes for health care."

I can't speak to Schumer's motivations, but whatever is driving him, I'm glad to see him step up the way he has.

SHEEPISH JINDAL SLINKS AWAY FROM HSR FUNDS.... The list of embarrassed conservative critics of the stimulus package is already pretty long, but Gov. Bobby Jindal holds a special place at the top. No one has condemned and accepted recovery funds with quite as much shameless flair as the Louisiana Republican.

Jindal, you'll recall, delivered a widely-ridiculed national address in February, rejecting the very idea of recovery efforts, and telling Americans that government is incapable of "rescu[ing] us from the economic storms raging all around us." He mocked the stimulus for being "larded with wasteful spending," including funding "for high-speed rail projects."

Over the summer, however, Jindal has been touring his home state, handing out checks -- featuring his name -- with money he received from the stimulus package he loathes.

But the hilarity really kicked in when Jindal took steps to apply for even more federal stimulus aid for -- you guessed it -- high-speed rail projects. Transportation officials from Jindal's administration had already sent federal officials the pre-application paperwork with the intention of building HSR linking Baton Rouge to New Orleans.

As news of Jindal's request made the rounds, the far-right Louisianan again became the subject of ridicule. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, for example, singled the governor out as one of the worst people in the world. Just 48 hours later, Jindal reversed course.

Two days after a national commentator mocked Gov. Bobby Jindal for possibly requesting federal stimulus money to build a light rail system between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, the governor's transportation secretary wrote to President Barack Obama's administration saying Louisiana isn't interested.

"Please be advised that the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development will not be applying for the High Speed AARA funds," state transportation chief William Ankner wrote to his federal counterpart, Secretary Ray LaHood. Ankner was referring to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. [...]

The news came as a surprise to business leaders who backed the idea and had participated in preliminary discussions with Ankner.

I continue to think Jindal is going about this the wrong way. The governor should just be upfront about this, apologize for trashing the stimulus bill, acknowledge he was wrong, and explain how important recovery efforts are to states like his. I'm sure the White House would be gracious about the whole thing. At that point, Jindal could apply for grants like these without looking like a comical, shameless hypocrite.

Wouldn't that be easier than all of this embarrassment?

BIRTHER NONSENSE FINDS A NEW CHAMPION?.... With right-wing activists investing so much time and energy in misleading the country about health care reform, they haven't had nearly as much time to invest in misleading the country about President Obama's place of birth. It's been quite nice, actually, to see "birthers" fade from public attention.

The stupidity may be poised for a comeback, thanks to a far-right congressman from Arizona.

About a month ago, Mike Stark asked several Republican lawmakers in D.C. if they believe the president is natural-born U.S. citizen. The vast majority of GOP members avoided answering the question -- some going to comical lengths to avoid Stark's easy inquiry. Rep. Trent Franks (R) of Arizona, however, gave "a correct and clear answer." Good for him.

That background, however, makes this local news report from Franks' district all the more curious. (via David Weigel)

The other main issue dealt with numerous speakers questioning Obama's birth certificate and why there wasn't an investigation into whether he is a naturalized citizen. One woman said a newspaper announcement of his birth in Hawaii was not sufficient. Another asked how he could have a passport without a birth certificate.

Franks said there was not enough evidence that Obama is not an American citizen. He did say there was a lot of conflicting evidence of Obama's citizenship and that he was considering filing a lawsuit, the only congressman to do so. Franks asked why the president did not simply produce a birth certificate. [emphasis added]

One speaker, a pre-school teacher, tearfully said Obama denounced the country as a Christian nation and warned he should learn a civics lesson. Franks agreed with her saying he was offended that Obama denigrated the country on an overseas trip and the president should speak in favor of the country when abroad.

First, just for the record, the "Christian nation" claim is absurd.

Second, and more important, is the notion that Franks might challenge the president's citizenship in court? I realize he's a right-wing lawmaker, but is he that mad?

I suppose we'll see. Franks is not a co-sponsor of the crazy birther bill in the House, and the news account did not include any exact quotes. It's certainly possible the article is mistaken.

As far as I can tell, no video of the event has been published online, but Franks' office has also not yet issued a statement in response to the article.

SPECULATION BASED ON NOTHING.... OK, just one more item about Michael Steele's health care op-ed. This argument helps capture the seriousness with which the RNC chairman is approach the reform debate:

[W]e need to prevent government from dictating the terms of end-of-life care. Many of the most significant costs of care come in the last six months of a patient's life, and every American household must consider how to treat their loved ones. Obama's government-run health "reform" would pay for seniors' meetings with a doctor to discuss end-of-life care. While nonthreatening at first, something that is quite normal for a family to do becomes troublesome when the government gets involved.... The government should simply butt out of conversations about end-of-life care and leave them to seniors, their families and their doctors.

A month ago, at a press conference, Steele struggled to even understand the basics of health care reform. Asked about basic details, Steele replied, "I don't do policy." He should have stuck to his instincts.

We talked earlier about the errors of fact and judgment in Steele's op-ed, but this argument about end-of-life care is a special kind of nonsense.

Steele concedes that reimbursing seniors who voluntarily choose to speak to their doctor about end-of-life care is fine. He adds, however, that this could become "troublesome." How could reimbursements become "troublesome"? Steele doesn't know. What in the bill leads him to think it might be "troublesome"? Steele doesn't know. It's just ridiculous speculation based on nothing.

The kicker is the irony. Steele wants the government to "butt out" of these issues, leaving end-of-life care matters "to seniors, their families and their doctors." But the surest way to have the government "butt out" is for seniors to have these end-of-life discussions in the first place. Reimbursements help guarantee that government won't needlessly intervene.

As Sen. Johnny Isakson, a conservative Republican from Georgia, recently explained, having an end-of-life directives or a living will "empowers you to be able to make decisions at a difficult time rather than having the government making them for you."

Steele has been struggling with this issue for a while. Last week, the RNC chairman said he doesn't regret "death panel" lies because the confusion is "out there in the grassroots of America." Asked if the imaginary provision actually exists in the legislation, Steele said, "It may or may not be. I don't know.... I think that's a legitimate point. You don't have to call it death panels if you don't want to. You can call it a panel. I call it rationing."

In August 2009, the chairman of a major American political party understands health care policy about as well as a small child. It says quite a bit about the quality of the debate.

MONDAY'S CAMPAIGN ROUND-UP....Today's installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn't generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers.

* In a surprise development, RNC Chairman Michael Steele appeared on a radio program last week, and seemed to agree with a radio talk-show host who blasted House GOP leaders John Boehner and Roy Blunt. With the latter running for the Senate next year in Missouri, the remarks are likely to be widely circulated.

* Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) appears to be struggling badly in his re-election bid in Nevada next year. The latest Mason-Dixon poll shows Reid trailing both real estate lawyer Danny Tarkanian and state GOP Chairwoman Sue Lowden in hypothetical match-ups.

* And speaking of Nevada, if scandal-plagued Gov. Jim Gibbons (R) seeks re-election, he'll likely lose badly in a GOP primary.

* If California, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is moving forward with her Republican gubernatorial campaign, but she's declining invitations to debate her GOP primary rivals. Her refusals are raising questions about Whitman's readiness for prime time.

* In New York, a new Siena Poll shows Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's (D) re-election prospects looking shaky, in part because of weak name i.d. (Gillibrand was appointed to the Senate seat after Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State). The poll found 24% of New Yorkers who said Gillibrand deserves to win a full term next year, 35% who prefer someone else, and 41% who are unsure.

* And in Georgia, the latest Rasmussen poll shows former Gov. Roy Barnes leading the 2010 Democratic gubernatorial primary, well out in front of state Attorney General Thurbert Baker.

MICHAEL STEELE, COMEDIAN.... A.L. wrote nine words this morning that literally made me laugh: "GOP now promising to protect seniors' Medicare from Dems."

As silly as that sounds, this is the point we've reached. In the 1960s, Republicans opposed the creation of Medicare. In the 1990s, Republicans shut down the federal government because a Democratic president wouldn't tolerate proposed GOP cuts to Medicare. In 2008, the Republican presidential ticket ran on a platform of cutting Medicare.

And in 2009, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has the chutzpah to write a Washington Post op-ed, accusing Democrats of trying to undermine Medicare.

Republicans want reform that should, first, do no harm, especially to our seniors. That is why Republicans support a Seniors' Health Care Bill of Rights, which we are introducing today, to ensure that our greatest generation will receive access to quality health care. [...]

[Obama] and congressional Democrats are planning to raid, not aid, Medicare by cutting $500 billion from the program to fund his health-care experiment. [...]

[W]e need to prohibit government from getting between seniors and their doctors. The government-run health-care experiment that Obama and the Democrats propose will give seniors less power to control their own medical decisions and create government boards that would decide what treatments would or would not be funded. Republicans oppose any new government entity overruling a doctor's decision about how to treat his or her patient.

Steele says Medicare faces long-term shortfalls, but he opposes efforts to address them. He condemns boards that could deny Medicare financing for some treatments, but fails to note that such boards already exist and have for years.

If one sifts through the nonsense, looking for something substantive, what we're left with is Steele's uninformed opposition to the creation of an Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC). The idea is to have appointed IMAC members -- physicians and medical experts, appointed by the White House and confirmed by the Senate -- who would have some added authority to help control what Medicare pays doctors and hospitals. The panel would probably help lower costs more effectively than Congress, which isn't especially good at these technical, medicinal, and scientific questions.

The idea was originally proposed by conservatives, embraced by Democrats, and would serve as part of a larger effort to save money and take political considerations out of the process.

And now Michael Steele wants seniors to think big bad Democrats are trying to undermine Medicare.

What an embarrassment.

Update: Steele personally endorsed the prospect of Medicare cuts during his unsuccessful 2006 Senate campaign.

Second Update: Media Matters fact-checks Steele's piece, point by point.

KENT CONRAD AND 'SIGNIFICANTLY LESS'.... There's one thing conservative Democratic senators seem to agree on when it comes to health care reform. Despite the big Democratic majorities on the Hill and the Democratic president, they see the need for a bill that's much weaker, less comprehensive, and less effective than what the Democratic mainstream has in mind.

The Gang of Six members made this much clear late last week, and Sen. Kent Conrad (D) of North Dakota, one of the six negotiators and a long-time opponent of a public option, reiterated the point yesterday. Reform is "going to have to be significantly less than what we've heard talked about," Conrad said.

In terms of "what we've heard talked about," the center-right Democrat was almost certainly referring to Democratic proposals that have already passed the House Education and Labor Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. These efforts, apparently, don't meet Conrad's standards. Americans and their failing health care system, Conrad insists, need less.

It's likely that means legislation that costs "significantly" less and does "significantly" less.

Jonathan Cohn explains that the reform bill that's already passed four of the five relevant committees were already scaled back to satisfy the demands of less-progressive lawmakers.

In order to keep the price tag at or below $1 trillion over ten years, Democrats had to write bills that would roll out reforms slowly, over several years, so that a new system was not fully in place until 2013 or later. That's a long time to wait for change, particularly if you're one of the unlucky souls who ends up without insurance -- or with inadequate insurance -- when illness strikes.

The saving grace of those four bills was that the consumer protections and financial assistance in them remained reasonably strong. If reform ends up looking like those four bills, then financial assistance would be available to people earning up to four times the poverty rate -- or around $88,000 a year in family income. (Subsidies would be available on a sliding scale, so that a family making $70,000 would get very little, a family making $60,000 would get more, and so on.) Such a measure would also limit out-of-pocket expenses to $10,000 a year per family, while providing other crucial protections. And, of course, it would include a real public insurance option.

If Conrad and his supporters get their way, the new health care system won't be nearly as generous -- or protective. They've made clear they want a package that costs less than $1 trillion. A lot less.

As a practical matter, that means "significantly less" help for the uninsured, and based on the research of the Center on Budget and Policy, many middle-class families that wouldn't receive any subsidies for coverage at all.

Atrios noted this morning that when all is said and done, Americans will actually have to like the health care bill if/when it comes law. Conrad, whose role is inexplicably critical to the process, insists reform has to offer fewer protections, less coverage, and fewer benefits, especially to the middle class. It wouldn't only be a lost once-in-a-generation opportunity, it would be a solution that almost no one likes.

Cohn concluded, "You can imagine why Republicans might think this is a dandy idea. But why on earth would Democrats agree?" Sen. Conrad, that's not a rhetorical question.

WHEN POLITICIANS ARE AFRAID TO TELL THE TRUTH.... I've never sought public office, so I can't relate to how difficult it must be to deal with sincere-but-ridiculous questions. Barney Frank offers an example of one style of response, but not everyone can pull it off as well as he does.

But at least Frank didn't pander to nonsense. A couple of weeks ago, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) of Iowa hosted a town-hall event and was asked "death panels." Instead of explaining reality, Grassley knowingly misled his audience, telling constituents, "[Y]ou have every right to fear.... We should not have a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma."

It was one of Grassley's lowest points of late -- Time's Joe Klein called the comments "sheer idiocy" -- which the conservative senator has struggled to explain. Yesterday, on "Face the Nation," Grassley conceded he knew the "death panel" claim wasn't true, but wasn't comfortable telling his constituents the facts.

"I said that because -- two reasons. Number one, I was responding to a question at my town meetings. I let my constituents set the agenda. A person that asked me that question was reading from language that they got off of the Internet. It scared my constituents. And the specific language I used was language that the president had used at Portsmouth, and I thought that it was -- if he used the language , then if I responded exactly the same way, that I had an opposite concern about not using end-of-life counseling for saving money, then I was answering -- [...]

"You would get into the issue of saving money, and put these three things together and you are scaring a lot of people when I know the Pelosi bill doesn't intend to do that, but that's where it leads people to."

Grassley, in other words, is comfortable letting confused constituents stay confused because they're "scared." Because right-wing lies have caused widespread confusion, he added, the provision "ought to be dropped."

But that's crazy. The sensible solution is to have Americans' elected leaders tell them the truth and alleviate their unfounded fears, not let panic-stricken, gullible people "set the agenda" and kill common-sense measures that up until recently enjoyed broad bipartisan support.

As for Grassley's claim that he used "exactly" the same language as President Obama -- "pull the plug on grandma" -- the Iowa senator again has it backwards. The president was mocking the "death panel" nonsense, explaining what wouldn't happen. Grassley's town-hall answer made it sound as if the bogus claim had merit.

Paul Krugman concluded, "We talk a lot about ideology, we talk a lot about the influence of moneyed interests, and all that is relevant. But we should not ignore the sheer personal cowardice of many politicians. Here we have Grassley saying, in effect, that he was afraid to tell a constituent that she was wrong -- then trying to blame President Obama for his failure to tell the truth."

CHRIS MATTHEWS PONDERS FACT-CHECKING.... Over the weekend, on "The Chris Matthews Show," the host and his panel pondered the importance of journalistic fact-checking. It led to this exchange between Matthews, Gloria Borger, and Joe Klein.

Matthews: Who's going to fact check for you?

Borger: We fact check, our editors...

Matthews: Online who's going to fact check?

Borger: There are still, it depends.

Matthews: The bloggers don't fact check.

Klein: Nobody fact checks. We still do, the print magazine and Time Magazine still has elaborate fact checkers...

Borger: We fact check.

Klein: ...but Time.com, no.

Jamison Foser noted that Chris Matthews "is the poster child for the punditocracy's habit of endlessly repeating falsehoods that happen to mesh with their worldview.... Is a television reporter who is wrong so often he has to admit 'I keep saying it, and I keep being wrong on this' really in any position to complain about anyone else's fact-checking?"

It is an odd complaint for Matthews to raise. How often do either of Matthews' shows -- "Hardball" or "The Chris Matthews Show" -- run corrections? Or even clarifications? Is there anyone -- outside the blogs, that is -- who checks the accuracy of Matthews' work?

Indeed, as Matt Corley explained, "It's ironic that a cable news host such as Chris Matthews would attack bloggers for supposedly not checking their facts, considering the amount of falsehoods and factually inaccurate statements he regularly utters on the air -- which have all been fact-checked by bloggers."