In an extraordinary move aimed at winning over reluctant Republican senators, the top Democratic negotiators on the Wall Street reform bill will reopen the conference committee Tuesday to swap out a controversial $19 billion tax on big banks, according to House and Senate aides.

The unusual development points to deepening troubles for Democrats in their push to finish the bill before the July 4th recess. The death Monday of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.V.) and the decision by Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) to oppose the bill unless the tax was removed left Democrats several votes shy of Senate passage.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/39167.html#ixzz0sGWfPdWa

Key Senate Democrats offered, during a White House meeting with President Barack Obama and skeptical Republicans on Tuesday, to scale back their ambitious plans to cap greenhouse gases across multiple sectors of the economy.

Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman told reporters after the 90-minute West Wing meeting that Obama held firm in his calls for a price on greenhouse gases. But they said the president acknowledged that he could agree to a more limited climate and energy bill than any the senators had previously drafted.

"We believe we have compromised significantly, and we're prepared to compromise further," Kerry said.

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The most "visible" player in the game today Christiano Ronaldo is playing for Portugal.  He's one of the best players in the world - and one of the best underwear modelers too :P

Unfortunately he is also insufferable, he dives on the regular, and makes whiny faces whenever calls don't go his way.  However, even his whiny faces are hard to look away from...

As the final Wall Street negotiations came to a close last week, the Obama administration quietly sided with Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) against most Democrats in support of a loophole in one of the key provisions of the financial reform bill.

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"Treasury's official position went from opposed to [the loophole] to supportive," one aide says. "They may have [even] overshot Brown's desires by a bit."

"Kagan has written in the past that the court, in (Bush v/s Gore), had been affected by the politics and policy preferences of its members. Her argument wasn't necessarily that this was a bad thing."

Here is a prospective Supreme Court justice saying that it is not necessarily a bad thing for the Justices to have rendered a judicial decision which is affected by politics. Not to mention that this decision, highly infected by politics, determined a presidential election in favor of the politics of the members of the court.

It's merely an interesting and beautiful variation rather than a worrisome thing, said Dr. Michael Treece, a St. Luke's Hospital pediatrician. I would be tempted to leave those fingers in place. I realize children would tease each other over the slightest things, and having extra digits on each hand is more than slight. But imagine what sort of a pianist a 12-fingered person would be. Imagine what sort of a flamenco guitarist. If nothing else, think of their typing skills.