More good stuff from Ezra Klein:

This bill is Clintonian: It achieves liberal ends through market means, and since conservatives frequently claim they are also in favor of access to medical care, it's not even clear that near-universal coverage can properly be called a liberal end. Not to mention that it's more conservative than the Great Triangulator himself was: It doesn't resemble his reforms so much as the Republican alternative to his reforms. But Democrats haven't gotten credit for that, in part because the opposition of Republicans meant they had to keep their liberals onboard, and that cut against trumpeting the conservative structure of the legislation.

But if President Mitt Romney had proposed this bill, a substantial number among his party would have stood with him on it, and no one would have trouble identifying what was conservative within it. And, to be fair, many Democrats would have fought the legislation every step of the way.

(Emphasis supplied.) Ezra has been great since the bill passed. The unanswered question though is the one I pose in my title.

Speaking for me only

Glenn Greenwald:

The New York Times' Peter Baker has an article today on Obama's leading candidates to replace Stevens, in which one finds this strange passage:

The president’s base hopes he will name a full-throated champion to counter Justice Antonin Scalia, the most forceful conservative on the bench. . . . The candidates who would most excite the left include the constitutional scholars Harold Hongju Koh, Cass R. Sunstein and Pamela S. Karlan.

Glenn seems convinced "the Left" won't be excited by Sunstein. I wish I could be so sure. At this point, I suspect that may not be true.

Speaking for me only

In August 2005, I posted Fighting Dems at Daily Kos:

Ed [Kilgore] is a sharp thinker and writer, but Ed lacks confidence in our Democratic ideals:

"We are more of a coalition party than they are," says Ed Kilgore, the policy director for the DLC. "If we put a gun to everybody's head in the country and make them pick sides, we're not likely to win."

Last week, writing about the critique I and others have offered regarding progressive political bargaining, Kilgore wrote:

I very much appreciate Kevin Drum but this post and this post really can not be reconciled. Kevin writes:

[T]he reform bill we ended up with is very similar to both the 1993 Republican counterproposal to Clintoncare and to Mitt Romney's healthcare plan for Massachusetts.

Just below that post, he wrote:

Ezra Klein:

What you're seeing here is the tension between being a conservative and being a Republican. It's not that you can't be both at the same time, but that you have to know which wins when ideological push comes to electoral shove. [. . . The health reforms] were defined as conservative as recently as two or three years ago. [. . . ]

Now that the health care bill is passed, what does it do?

• Here's are the immediate benefits
• Here's how it impacts the insurance marketplace

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Osama bin Laden released a tape today, threatening to kill any captured Americans if Khalid Sheikh Mohmammed is executed.

"The White House has expressed its desire to execute him," bin Laden said, according to a translation provided by Flashpoint Partners, which is headed by terrorism expert Evan Kohlmann. "The day America makes that decision will be the day it has issued a death sentence for any one of you that is taken captive."

U.S. Reaction:

U.S. officials dismissed the threat, saying that it has long been clear that Americans captured by al-Qaeda cannot expect to live.

This sounds like a weeks-old message delivered by carrier pigeon.

Update: The House passed the bill with a 220-207 vote.

Here's the vote tally for the Senate passage today of the health care reconciliation bill. The vote was 56 to 43. Three Dems voted no, the two senators from Arkansas and Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

The Dems defeated more than 40 Republican amendments. It now goes back to the House for a vote on some procedural matters related to student loans, and could be passed by the House tonight:

The bill now heads to the House, where the Rules Committee could begin action within hours. Democratic aides said a final vote on the package could come in early evening, although if Republicans throw up procedural barriers, the vote could be delayed until later Thursday night.

March Madness resumes tonight with the first four of the Sweet Sixteen games. the other four are tomorrow night.

My picks: Syracuse (-7) over Butler, West Virginia (-4) over Washington, Xavier (+5) over K-State, and in the ultimate of David v. Goliath games, Kentucky (-9) over Cinderella Cornell (this line looks ridiculously short. Kentucky should be at least a 12 point fav in this game. Trap line? We'll find out.)

This is an Open Thread.

Busy. Open Thread.

NYTimes:

Senate Republicans learned early Thursday that they will be able to kill language in a measure altering President Barack Obama's newly enacted health care overhaul, meaning the bill will have to return to the House for final congressional approval.

Because of this, there is no reason not to try and add a public option via amendment. Yesterday I was critical of David Sirota's campaign to have Senator Bennet offer such an amendment. This new development changes that. I'm with Sirota now:

Speaking for me only

Failure to tweet is now a crime on Long Island? This is pretty ridiculous. Here's the story. There's a teen pop star named Justin Bieber. In November, he had an appearance scheduled at a mall on Long Island. The place was mobbed. Police say the crowd got unruly and they told his manager, Scott "Scooter" Braun, to send out a tweet announcing the event was canceled. Police say he took too long.

The prosecutor says it took Braun 1 1/2 hours to send two tweets. Braun said it took seven minutes. Braun faces up to one year in jail if convicted on reckless endangerment and criminal nuisance.

Scooter turned himself in to police Wednesday afternoon and was arrested.

Since when is a booked guest's manager responsible for security? Isn't that the job of the store who booked his appearance, the mall or the police?

So who is Justin Bieber?

Bieber, 16, is a Canadian singer who was discovered on YouTube.

Here's Justin's twitter page. Here's a video of him singing (ok, so he is cute.) He has 1.5 million followers. #Free Scooter Braun is now trending on Twitter.

And on that, I'm calling it a night.