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- Health-care reform roundup: Senate Finance Committee needs another week before a vote; doctors love reform, especially those from states represented by conservative Democrats; Republicans think attacking the AMA is a great idea; and a portrait of Betsy McCaughey, anti-reform hack.
- Is it really true that moderate Democrats are "falling in line" to vote for cloture when the final health-care reform bill reaches the Senate floor? Wouldn't that mean that Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln are principled politicians who believe reform deserves an up-or-down vote, as opposed to being filibustered into oblivion? Wouldn't that mean moderate Democrats care more about backlash from their constituents than the moneyed interests of their states? I'll be nothing short of amazed if all 60 members of the Democratic caucus -- not one defection -- can break a Republican filibuster, particularly with the inclusion of the public option.
- It's funny that Republicans didn't take Michael Steele to task in a private meeting over the RNC chairman's tendency to put his foot in his mouth during public appearances but rather told him to stop talking about policy altogether. It's true that Steele knows about as much about policy as your average Republican member of Congress, and makes you wonder why the gang over at First Read thinks Steele is the RNC's Howard Dean.
- Weekend Remainders: The tea party movement gets a new sugar daddy; Barack Obama's approval rating on a state-by-state basis; liberal bias, just as pervasive 2,000 years ago as it is today; "no compromise" global warming activists have no idea how politics works; and the worst argument you've ever read for banning openly gay people from the military.
--Mori Dinauer
