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- Polling the madness: 45 percent of Americans believe government-run "death panels" are "likely to happen"; 53 percent of Americans support "Barack Obama's health care plan" when given factual details about it; 39 percent of voters (and 62 percent of Republicans) think the government should stay out of Medicare; and only 62 percent of Americans believe Barack Obama was born in the United States.
- To answer Dave Weigel's unstated question about why The Weekly Standard's John McCormack believes the LaRouche conspiracists are "fringe Democrats," the reason is because there is a pervasive belief amongst conservatives that political radicalism is an exclusive phenomenon of leftist politics (for example, Jonah Goldberg is still connecting the dots on his pet thesis). LaRouche's disciples have no relationship to mainstream liberalism, and Democrats purged these people long ago, whereas the right generally and the GOP specifically quietly support and cheer on their own fanatics.
- With the White House now publicly admitting that they don't believe Republicans (who blame Democrats for killing bipartisanship) are serious about achieving bipartisan health care reform -- which, of course, never actually existed -- the pertinent question is Kevin Drum's: "did Obama ever expect anything different? Was his calm, deliberative, bipartisan sales pitch genuine, or did he know it would fail all along?"
- Speaking of reading minds, Matt Yglesias observes the difficulty in determining whether Senate Democratic centrists actually want a health care reform bill and are stomping their feet for political cover, or whether they're opposed to it on principle and are just trying to delay the legislation until it dies. And here's a situation where asking the direct question will yield little helpful information because the Senators in question could simply be lying when they assure you that they deeply desire reform.
- The problem for gun owners who are serious about protecting their Second Amendment rights goes beyond merely being associated with violent, racist fanatics. Rather the real irony is that the ones who are most extreme in their beliefs have backgrounds like this gentleman, whose defense of the 90s militias and ties to domestic terrorists suggest such violence could occur again, which would create the ideal climate for Congress curtailing said gun rights the fanatics were trying to protect in the first place.
- Remainders: Fox News takes a creative approach to the problem of anonymous sourcing; for all the ranting about the dangers of a public plan, most states are already on board; Bobby Jindal loves him some hypocrisy; and Michele Bachmann attempts to interpret the Constitution, fails.
--Mori Dinauer
