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- Tom Daschle is officially on board for HHS head in the Obama administration, with the president-elect promising health care reform this year. Daschle will be joined by Jeanne Lambrew, named deputy director of the White House Office of Health Reform. Steven Chu is in for secretary of energy, clearly a welcome change to the Bush administration's politicized and corrupt approach to science for the past eight years. Also, Nicholas Kristof makes the case for a "secretary of food."
- Arlen Specter must believe political grandstanding is a suitable substitute for a committee gavel. The ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee believes greater scrutiny ought to be paid to Attorney General-designate Eric Holder's involvement in the pardon of Marc Rich at the twilight of the Clinton administration, potentially holding up Chairman Patrick Leahy's plans for a speedy confirmation hearing in January. See also this brief NY Times profile of the rising influence of the American Constitution Society, arguably the progressive equivalent of the conservative Federalist Society.
- Gee, who could have predicted that the change.gov "Open for Questions" feature would solicit a flood of questions about Barack Obama's involvement in the Blagojevich scandal? It's become so dominant that the site's administrators have taken to flagging some of the questions as "inappropriate." What was that I was saying yesterday about these experiments direct democracy?
- Fun polling statistics: A thin majority of Republicans approve of the Obama transition thus far, and only 18 percent of Americans say they will "miss" President Bush.
- I guess Bill Clinton's compliance with the Obama administration in disclosing the identity of donors to his global initiative isn't enough to placate the GOP, who are considering having Clinton to testify at his wife's confirmation hearing over potential conflicts of interest. 90's politics forever!
- I'm not sure what to make of this meeting today between Obama and Biden and the National War Powers Commission: "The proposal would scrap the problematic War Powers Act of 1973, a measure passed in the hangover from Vietnam to give Congress more say in committing troops to the battlefield but largely honored in the breach ever since by presidents who deemed it unconstitutional. In its place, the commission proposes a law requiring a president to consult lawmakers before any "significant military action" and calling on Congress to vote up or down within 30 days."
- Nate Silver observes that appointed senators rarely win reelection, and Andrew Roth estimates the value of a Senate seat to be approximately $6.2 million.
- Ron Rosenbaum makes the slightly tongue-in-cheek case for allowing Barack Obama the privilege of smoking stress-relieving cigarettes in the White House, despite the ban enacted during the Clinton administration.
--Mori Dinauer
