×
- If you want to know the details of the more than 500 amendments proposed to Max Baucus' health care bill, I suggest you glance at Igor Volsky's useful tables at the Wonk Room. The vast majority are frivolous Republican proposals designed to slow down the whole process, but there are also some serious proposals, mostly from Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), to increase subsidies, include the public option, and otherwise try to make this a better bill.
- Bradford Plumer observes that while the global recession has decreased global carbon emissions, a new IEA report confirms that good emissions policy in Europe, China, and even the United States is having an impact. I predict this will lead to a major error of causation by Republicans who will assume the good policies created the recession and thus must be rolled back before the economy goes into meltdown. Indeed, right on cue, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) wants to strip the EPA of any funding used to "regulate or control carbon dioxide from any sources" other than from a "mobile source."
- Scott Lemieux flags this Wall Street Journal piece on Sonia Sotomayor's early queries during oral arguments as a Supreme Court justice and highlights some interesting news: Sotomayor feels the Court ought to re-examine the long-held assumption that corporations have the same rights as a living person. Not only is this a good idea, but it serves as a reminder that market capitalism is less the product of an invisible hand than it is the result of the laws, rulings and regulations that shape it.
- Chris Orr thinks a pop-up ad at The American Spectator's web site distills the American right because it expresses the single-minded conservative pursuit of pissing off liberals. Maybe. But I think Young Americans for Freedom spokesman Jason Mattera's "argument" that the conservative movement's women "are hot" whereas the left's are not more succinctly captures the sophomoric immaturity and lack of intellectual seriousness which seem to be the qualifying attributes for aspiring movement conservatives.
- Remainders: Massachusetts is on its way to approving Senator Dukakis (or somebody); the U.S. Senate provides excellent opportunities for grown men to regress into whining infants; a reminder that Condoleeza Rice was National Security Adviser and then Secretary of State for eight years; I'd have so much more respect for Fox News if they openly admitted to being the GOP's cable television PR division; and Newt Gingrich, friend of the Latino community.
--Mori Dinauer
