Dancing With the Stars pro Cheryl Burk has her work cut out for her this season with former House Speaker Tom DeLay, but his appearance last night was fun to watch and I give him props for trying to loosen up. The judges didn't know what to make of him. The first elimination is tomorrow night.

Globe. John Cole is displeased. That's a lot of agita from Cole for a 4 month appointment. This too shall pass as there will be an election in January.

For the record, I was not paying much attention to what Massachusetts did in 2004, but after the fact, it was pretty outrageous. This? Common sense. It's good legislation.

Speaking for me only

Your turn.

This is an Open Thread.

JournOLister Jonathan Cohn joins the bash Howard Dean and the public option party, this time pooh poohing reconciliation:

Democracy for America, Howard Dean's group, has (via TPM) launched a campaign to pass health care reform through the reconciliation process. The idea is that while there may not be 60 votes in the Senate to support a public option, there may be 50. And, in the reconciliation process, legislation can pass with just 50 votes, with no worries about rounding up the 60 it takes to break a filibuster.

. . . [R]econciliation might alienate more conservative-leaning Democrats in the Senate. . . . As a result, holding even 50 votes for reform via reconciliation might not be that easy. It could be done, for sure. But, once concessions to those centrists are made, the bill might not look that different from what the Senate would have produced through the usual procedures.

Here's a simple math lesson for the JournOListers. 60 is more than 50. Having to placate Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu is not the same as placating Bill Nelson and Jon Tester. More . .

First and foremost, let's hope Senator Byrd, 91 years young, is all right.

Second, the search for 60 for meaningful health care reform seems a Sisyphean task. d-day writes:

Robert Byrd is 91 and quite unwell. Ambulances raced to his house today because he got up too fast. Democrats may gain one seat in Massachusetts by the end of the week if the appointment law goes through, but Byrd has been in and out of hospitals for months and is rarely seen on the Senate floor.

d-day wants a replacement. I think it is time to stop chasing the unattainable 60 votes for real health care reform and instead pursue the Schumer Strategy -- a good bill with a public option through reconciliation and a second bill with the mythical "80%" that "everyone" agree on.

Speaking for me only

Ezra Klein billed Sen Ron Wyden's exchange concept as "the idea that could save health care reform." Unfortunately for Ezra, who buries the lede, the CBO says it does virtually nothing:

Relative to the Chairman’s mark, the amendment as modeled would reduce the net impact on federal deficits by about $1 billion over 10 years. There would not be substantial effects on the total number of people with insurance coverage or the sources of that coverage, relative to the Chairman’s mark.

(Emphasis supplied.) So, this is the "reform" you have been waiting for. The one that does nothing. Of course, Ezra could take a page from Kent Conrad and ignore the CBO's findings when he does not liek them. Hurray for the JournOList!!

Speaking for me only

Radley Balko accuses those of us who ridicule the modern day John C. Calhouns in the Republican Party (see, e.g., Rick Perry and Tim Pawlenty arguing they can nullify federal legislation) as not taking the Tenth Amendment seriously. the problem with Balko's argument is twofold - (1) the theory of nullification was decided in 1865, when the North won the Civil War; and (2)the Tenth Amendment does not say what he thinks it does. Balko says we can look it up. Indeed we can. Here is what the Tenth Amendment says:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

The text makes clear that the key analysis is what powers were "not delegated to the United States." In essence, the Tenth Amendment is irrelevant to the argument. It is not "states rights" via the Tenth Amendment that determine whether the Congress can act, it is the rest of the Constitution that is at issue. Of course the main issues, given the jurisprudence, is the Commerce power. Tenthers like to ignore Gibbons v. Ogden, where Chief Justice John Marshall wrote:

I have only scanned the news reports on Gen. Stanley McChrystal's assessment of the war in Afghanistan, and at first blush, I think he has it right on the strategy. But it is NEVER acceptable for a subordinate to threaten resignation if his superior (in this case, the Commander in Chief, the President of the United States) does not follow his recommendations. But that is apparently what McChrystal may be willing to do:

Three officers at the Pentagon and in Kabul told McClatchy that the McChrystal they know would resign before he'd stand behind a faltering policy that he thought would endanger his forces or the strategy. "Yes, he'll be a good soldier, but he will only go so far," a senior official in Kabul said. "He'll hold his ground. He's not going to bend to political pressure."

In my mind, that is NOT what good soldiers do. Good soldiers follow legal orders issued to them. If this report is correct, then General McChrystal should be removed from his command. This threat would seriously weaken the concept enshrined in our Constitution of civilian control of the military. If McArthur can be fired, certainly a McChrystal can be fired.

Speaking for me only

Scarecrow writes about the JournOList campaign against Howard Dean and the public option:

Beltway reporter Ron Brownstein [. . .] tweet[ed] a gratuitous insult about Howard Dean. [. . . ]But Brownstein isn't the only guy who got the memo to denigrate Dean because he has the temerity to keep fighting for the public option when the White House would rather Democrats stop demanding something the White House is willing to give up. The New Republic's Jonathan Chait piles on his own criticism of Dean's advocacy, but gets his history wrong. In an article with the lead in, How Liberal Despair is Hurting Health Care Reform, TNR's Jonathan Chait lectures us on the need to take what we've been offered now and build on it later [. . .] Chait's own gratuitous slam at Dean is targeted at the "liberal fixation" on the public plan [. . .]

[More...]

Brazil has taken center stage in the situation in Honduras, deciding to host ousted Honduras President Zelaya in its embassy in Tegucigalpa:

After what he described as a 15-hour trek through the mountains, taking back roads to avoid checkpoints, Mr. Zelaya and his wife took refuge at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital.

Obviously, Brazilian President Lula da Silva and the deposed Honduran President were unhappy that attention had fallen away from the Honduran situation. Here's the part that is interesting to me:

Mohammed Zazi, father of Najibullah Zazi, is now represented by the Federal Defender's office in Colorado. Colorado has excellent federal defenders and he will get quality representation.

What about Najibullah? He told the court today he wanted to stay with Arthur Folsom, the lawyer he met for the first time on Tuesday of last week, who took him to the FBI office on Wednesday, had him waive his right to remain silent, provide fingerprint, DNA and handwriting samples and for the next three days released personal details about his client's life and activities to the media. Folsom and the PR rep he (presumably) hired didn't stop talking until Saturday, when things went south. As a result of the chain of events Folsom set in motion, Zazi, his father and a third man in New York are now charged with making false statements to federal officials, an offense that carries up to 8 years in prison. And the feds have a wealth of information about Zazi, his family and a lot of other people it would have taken them months or years, if ever, to gather. [More...]

In Newsweek, a report of a study showing torture can actually impair a person's ability to tell the truth.

[N]eurobiologist Shane O'Mara of the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience in Dublin explains in a paper in the journal Trends in Cognitive Science called "Torturing the Brain," "the use of such techniques appears motivated by a folk psychology that is demonstrably incorrect.

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