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- Larry Summers presented on the state of the economy at the Brookings Institution today, and while it perhaps inspired more confidence than any of Timothy Geithner's recent appearances, Summers has the luxury of being about to talk in a more theoretical fashion than the Treasury secretary does.
- It's more than a little disconcerting that eight Senate Democrats from states heavily invested in the fossil fuel industry have signed onto a letter with 25 Republicans to protest the administration's cap-and-trade plan solely because it might do an end-run around the filibuster. Matt Yglesias asks, "does Congress want to tackle America's problems?" and I think for this group of craven individuals who signed the letter, the answer is clearly, "no."
- Some senators like to shirk their responsibilities in packs. Not John McCain. No, when The Maverick wants to grind the business of the Senate down to a halt, all it takes is his discovering that an Interior department nominee once accurately and mildly criticized a former president's environmental record. "I will be considering seriously whether I can support your nomination or not," McCain said.
- It's only been a day since we learned that the AFL-CIO is ready to support Arlen Specter's bid for reelection in exchange for his vote on EFCA, and now we learn that SEIU's Andy Stern has made a similar proposition to the Pennsylvania Republican.
- A CQ Politics story on Harry Reid begins with this unsubstantiated piece of conventional wisdom: "As Senate majority leader, he juggles a myriad of competing political interests. He also has to balance those against his own best interest as he gears up for a potentially tough re-election battle in 2010" (emphasis mine) That would be the same Harry Reid who has no credible challenger in a state trending Democratic where the GOP is in shambles. Oh, and prominent Nevada Republicans are endorsing Reid. But I suppose I can't deny that the potential is there.
- As you probably know, Jim Cramer didn't fare too well last night on The Daily Show. You might not have known that the trauma was such that the humbled financial adviser had to cancel his morning talking head appearance.
- Remainders: John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco finally clear the Senate; Joe Lieberman says let bygones be bygones; the American Enterprise Institute feels the pinch of economic hard times; the birther conspiracy theorists are keeping the pressure on Congress and the Supreme Court; the administration bafflingly tries to dismiss another torture case; Israel won't be seeing less money from the United States any time soon; the South Carolina state legislature has decided that since Mark Sanford is apparently uninterested in governing that they'll have to pick up the slack; and nobody could have predicted that the George W. Bush "Freedom Institute" at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas would be a source of embarrassment and controversy.
--Mori Dinauer
