In a piece by Jon Chait that is marred through and through by bad analysis, I thought this statement the most questionable:

Republicans are [. . .] alerting the House that Senators will betray any deal they make. [. . .] Clearly, this is mostly a bluff. After all, Senate Democrats would be crazy to make specific promises to the House and then renege on them -- they would never pass another bill again.

First, a bluff is threatening to do something yourself, not predicting what someone else will do (there is a lot of misuse of poker in this piece.) Second, when was the last time anyone paid a price for double-crossing any Dem ever? The Senate has failed to pass 290 passed bills passed by THIS House. This would only be number 291. More . . .

Jan Crawford writes:

For the life of me, I just don't get why the White House continues to try to pick a fight with the Supreme Court. [. . . A]fter Chief Justice John Roberts made some entirely reasonable remarks yesterday -- and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs just had to respond [. . .]

Leave aside the misstatements in Crawford's piece (it was not the first time a President has criticized a SCOTUS decision in the SOTU and Roberts DID criticize Obama's choice to criticize the Citizen's United in the SOTU (Obama had criticized it before)), the political calculation for the White House is obvious -- Dems will run against Citizens United in this year's elections. Any chance to talk about it is welcome. CJ Roberts' ill advised remarks provided the White House that chance. More . . .

Matt Yglesias writes:

I think there’s a lot of value in the fact that guys like Kevin Drum and Glenn Greenwald who live outside the DC-NYC media/politics hub are able to offer commentary on current affairs from relatively high profile platforms. [. . .] Readers deserve to be able to read a varied set of people working with a diverse set of models. Among other things, the existence of variety gives people an opportunity to test theories about capture and such. I think regular readers would agree that Kevin and I generally have pretty similar sellout wanker political opinions.

I think that's right (and yes, I get the joke - obviously Matt does not think his views are that of a sellout wanker and neither do I. I do think that they have an insider/Beltway Dem perspective. My problem has always been the attempt to disavow this obvious reality.) I think it is important to understand this "capture" (Yglesias' word) phenomenon. Here is an obvious one - the great enthusiasm Village bloggers have for the Grayson Medicare Buy In plan. They all love it. Guess what? they all know it has no chance of passage or of being a stumbling block for passage of the heath bill they want passed - which by a happy coincidence, is the one the President wants passed. More . .

Update: (Jeralyn) I just got back from court and a 9 hour hearing (no ruling yet, we're not done, but at least we don't go back for several weeks.) I'm pretty out of touch with the news, but will catch up tomorrow. Thanks to BTD for the open threads today and readers for hanging in. This past week may be longest I've gone without blogging in many years. I'm looking forward to returning.

Open Thread.

Open Thread.

I have a big wiretap hearing tomorrow so no blogging from me until it's over. American Idol will have to wait.

Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Your turn.

Open thread.

Glenn Greenwald discusses the latest addition to the WaPo Editorial Page Editor's New McCarthyite stable:

Marc Thiessen catapulted himself from obscure, low-level Bush speechwriter into regular Washington Post columnist, joining fellow torture defenders Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol. Today, Thiessen's column defends the Liz-Cheney/Kristol smear campaign against DOJ lawyers [. . .] Congratulations, Fred Hiatt: every time people are certain you can't possibly bring the Post any lower, you manage to prove them wrong.

Yes, the Hiatt Era at the WaPo will be remembered in infamy. Here's something I wrote about Hiatt in 2005.

Speaking for me only

Why did the progressives fail in the health bill negotiations? Chris Bowers has a theory (finally he acknowledges that progressives were "largely ineffective" in the health care debate.) Jon Walker has a better one. I have my own series on Madman Political Bargaining. MaryB has the best explanation:

I actually think the problem is that the Progressives never thought of themselves as being in a true negotiation with the Democrats as a whole and never acknowledged that the only TRUE negotiations were taking place among themselves - that the Republicans didn't matter.

[MORE . . .]

I got an e-mail yesterday from Amazon telling me my affiliate account is being dropped because Colorado passed a law requiring sales tax on internet purchases. Amazon wants Coloradans to work to get the law repealed. In the meantime, it is cancelling all business and affiliate accounts that do business with them.

The affiliates, ranging from online booksellers to individual bloggers who advertise Amazon on their websites to receive a commission in return, were both angry and confused by the move. And some say they were not notified.

Judith Briles, chief executive officer of Mile High Press, a book publisher in Aurora, says:

"Amazon is going to get horrendous publicity for this. But there are two bad guys: Amazon and the lawmakers who moved this legislation through so fast."

It was odd they canceled the accounts immediately. And I liked doing business with Amazon, even though their referral rates are really low. [More...]

I'm off to see Bon Jovi at the Pepsi Center in Denver. I talked the TL kid into going with me, and his dad gave us great seats.

I'm sorry (not) to miss Jason and Molly's wedding on TV, but I have "24" and "Life Unexpected" Tivo'd.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.