Sad news for Joe Paterno. As if this month hasn't been bad enough, his son says he has been diagnosed with a treatable form of lung cancer.

I'm sending good thoughts his way. Hopefully the media will focus on the more important aspect of the story -- Sandusky -- and give the Paternos some privacy to deal with this terrible illness.

Busy day. Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Update: LA Sheriff says Robert Wagner is not a suspect.

Who didn't love Natalie Wood? What an icon.

The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department will hold a press conference today to announce they are re-opening the investigation into Natalie Wood's drowning death 30 years ago. The decision is reportedly based on new recollections by the skipper of the boat, Dennis Davern, on the 30th anniversary of her death.

L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca told The Times that homicide detectives want to talk to the captain based on comments he had made recounting the case on its 30th anniversary. Baca did not detail what the captain said regarding the case.....A law enforcement source added that the department had recently received a letter from an unidentified "third party" who said that the captain had "new recollections" about the case.

The White House is threatening to veto the defense spending bill over the House-Senate compromise on indefinite detention.

More here and here.

Congress passed a temporary funding bill today to avoid a government shutdown.

Thousands crossed the Brooklyn Bridge tonight, as union workers joined the OWS protesters. NYPD arrested hundreds today, it's a scene that is replaying all across the country.

• Good photos here
• Photos of New York Arrests here
• Live cam (thankfully no sound) at Brooklyn Bridge here.
• Listen to NYPD Special Operations Division and Traffic Scanner live here
• Follow arrests at #OccupyArrests.

Downtown Denver is a mess. 30 minutes ago there were police cars everywhere, blocking traffic, even driving the wrong way down one-way streets without using their sirens. Buses couldn't move, every street between Stout and Larimer on 14th and 17th had 4 to 5 police cars. There were no protesters I could see, just a mess of police cars and lanes blocked. Not one news station is reporting on it.

Anyone know what this is about?

Can you imagine how happy the Obama reelection team would be if they got to face Newt Gingrich next year? True, if they could pick who they face, it would be Bachmann or Cain, but avoiding Romney, or even Perry, would be unbelievably fortunate. And yet, Rasmussen Reports says it's Gingrich time:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Iowa Republican caucus-goers shows Gingrich with 32% followed by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney at 19%. Georgia businessman Herman Cain, who led in Iowa last month, drops to third with 13% of the vote. Texas Congressman Ron Paul draws 10% of the vote in Iowa, while Texas Governor Rick Perry and Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann each grab six percent (6%). Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum draws support from five percent (5%) of caucus-goers while former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman picks up two percent (2%). Only one percent (1%) would prefer some other candidate and six percent (6%) more are undecided.

To be sure, Ras is wholly unreliable and what ax they are grinding is important to know. But how great would it be if Gingrich was the GOP nominee?

Regular readers know that my speculative view was that President Obama never really cared about whether a public insurance program would be included in the vaunted exchanges. If they were in, he was ok with that. If they weren't, he was ok with that too. He mouthed a preference for the "public option," but never did anything to try and get it in (by contrast, he fought hard for a tax on so-called "Cadillac" health insurance plans.) I never paid much attention to the "Obama dealt the public option away" stories. Whether he did or didn't, by making clear he was not going to fight for it, he made its demise pretty likely.

That said, Jonathan Bernstein's questioning of the "Obama killed the public option" story bothers me -- not because he questions the story, but because his claims regarding what he accomplished are clearly overblown. The title of Bernstein's piece is "Obama never secretly killed the public option. It’s a myth." Bernstein has no way of knowing this. What he attempts to do, with some success, is undermine the story that it has been demonstrated that Obama in fact "killed the public option." I think he did a good job of debunking that claim. What he has not done is provide any evidence that "Obama did not kill the public option." I do not think "the President killed the public option." But I am positive Jonathan Bernstein has not disproven the claim.

Speaking for me only

Kevin Drum:

We liberals keep thinking that anti-tax fever has to crest any time now, and I remember a slew of magazine pieces predicting exactly that around 2006-07. But it hasn't happened yet. Or, more accurately, I guess I should say that Democrats are still scared witless by the idea of proposing a broad tax increase, and the evidence suggests they're right to be.

What evidence is Kevin Drum referring to? The last time taxes were raised in the United States was in 1993, by Bill Clinton. He won reelection in a landslide. The issue is simple - what is the best policy? Because good politics follows good policy. What's even more interesting is that here is an issue where the President of the United States does have immense power - he can veto any measure on the question of the Bush tax cuts. Indeed, he can do it AFTER his last election campaign, November 2012.

This is one issue where the President has the dominant hand. He should play it.

E.J. Dionne notes:

Here is a surefire way to cut $7.1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade. Do nothing. That’s right. If Congress simply fails to act between now and Jan. 1, 2013, the tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush expire, $1.2 trillion in additional budget cuts go through under the terms of last summer’s debt-ceiling deal, and a variety of other tax cuts also go away.

Matt Yglesias writes:

Here’s the thing you should keep in mind about the long-term deficit. Under current law, the Bush tax cuts will expire. [. . .] There is absolutely no need to get even a single Republican to assent to this plan.

Absolutely everything you’ve heard over the past year or month or week about various “bargains” or deals flows from the fact that Democrats have taken this idea off the table.[. . .] This creates a crippling bargaining weakness for the Democrats. The Republican negotiating objective is low taxes, but the Democratic negotiating objective is bipartisan agreement.

(Emphasis supplied.) You don't say?

The strange thing about the “super committee” process is that it’s been clear from the beginning that the Democrats will end up surrendering one way or the other. That’s because of the way the “trigger” has been structured. The automatic cuts are supposed to be evenly divided between domestic programs that Democrats want to protect and defense programs that Republicans want to protect, but Democrats also favor protecting those defense programs. [. . .] That means Democrats have merely re-created the original debt ceiling problem for themselves. They don’t want to agree to an all-cuts deficit reduction, but they really don’t want to experience the alternative.

You don't say.

Open Thread.

Really long day at work -- just getting home, haven't seen the news and I'm going to watch the X-Factor and Harry's Law and call it a night.

Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.