memeorandum: Sen. Kennedy's committee passes health care bill (Associated Press)

11:15 AM ET, July 15, 2009

Top Items:

House Democrats Want to Fund Health Care With an Ill-Advised Surtax on the Rich. — THERE IS a serious case to be made that the U.S. income tax system should become more progressive. The average rate paid by the top 1 percent of households shrank from 33 percent in 1986 to about 23 percent in 2006.

Discussion: Wake up America, THE WEEK News & Opinion, Los Angeles Times, Moe Lane and The Note

Edwin Chen / Bloomberg:

Obama Open to Partisan Vote on Health-Care Overhaul, Aides Say — President Barack Obama may rely only on Democrats to push health-care legislation through the U.S. Congress if Republican opposition doesn't yield soon, two of the president's top advisers said.

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Think Progress, The Note, Don Surber, Zandar Versus The Stupid, Washington Post, AMERICAblog News, Wall Street Journal, Commentary, The Politico, Hot Air, Say Anything and Gateway Pundit

Associated Press:

Sen. Kennedy's committee passes health care bill — WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate health committee has passed legislation to revamp health care, becoming the first congressional committee to act on President Barack Obama's goal of overhauling the system this year.

Discussion: AmSpecBlog and USA Today

Wall Street Journal:

Health Bill Would Hit Small Business — $1.04 Trillion House Health Bill Hits All but Tiniest Firms for Not Providing Insurance — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, from left, stands with House Democratic leaders Steny Hoyer, Pete Stark, Henry Waxman, Charles Rangel, and John Dingell to announce health-care legislation on Tuesday.

Discussion: Greg Mankiw's Blog, DailyFinance, Right Wing News, USA Today, The Politico, Washington Times, Washington Post and naked capitalism

New York Times:
House Health Plan Outlines Higher Taxes on Rich

Discussion: The Foundry, The Caucus, msnbc.com and Newshoggers.com

Erica Werner / Associated Press: House bill would make health care a right

Kbh / KeithHennessey.com:
Does the House really want to raise taxes on eight million uninsured people?

Discussion: Hot Air

The Hill:
Healthcare reform advances

Discussion: The Hill's Twitter Room and Blog entry

Ezra Klein:
The House Releases Its Health-Care Reform Bill

Discussion: The Daily Dish, Crooks and Liars, The Bilerico Project, Director's Blog, The Treatment, Wonk Room, The Reaction, YID With LID, Weekly Standard, AmSpecBlog and Amygdala

edlabor.house.gov:
America's Affordable Health Choices Act

Discussion: Daily Kos, WhiteHouse.gov Blog, QandO, The Gavel, Left in the West, Michelle Malkin, msnbc.com, AmSpecBlog, Ezra Klein, Hullabaloo, Firedoglake, Matthew Yglesias, AMERICAblog News, Blog entry, Washington Monthly, TPMDC, Angry Bear and MoJo Blog Posts

Jonathan Cohn / The Treatment:
A HELPing Hand — For the last week or so, media attention …

Discussion: Washington Monthly, NOW! Blog, Hullabaloo and TPMDC

Craig Crawford / Craig Crawford's Trail Mix:

Smiling GOPers Ought to be Frowning — Watching Lindsey Graham's gotcha grin as he needled Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor with disingenuous and rhetorical questions you had to wonder what was so funny. — Does the Republican senator think it is amusing that he and his party's …

Discussion: The Opinionator, Opinion L.A., Think Progress, Latest Open Salon Blog, pandagon.net, The Mahablog, Confederate Yankee, Washington Wire, Politics Daily, The Atlantic Politics Channel and TalkLeft

Matt Apuzzo / Associated Press:

FACT CHECK: Don't quote Sotomayor on that, Senator — WASHINGTON (AP) - In endorsing Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy did some creative rewriting of history. And he put quote marks around it. — Trying to head off criticism …

Discussion: Washington Examiner, Salon, Wake up America, The Volokh Conspiracy, The Moderate Voice, Christian Science Monitor, Political Mavens, Los Angeles Times, Black & Right and Gateway Pundit

Randy Barnett / The Volokh Conspiracy:

Mike Seidman on Sotomayor: On the Federalist Society Online Debate on the Sotomayor hearings (click here and scroll down), my Georgetown Law colleague Mike Seidman—a cofounder and intellectual leader of the Critical Legal Studies movement in the 1980s—is brutally candid in his opinion of Judge Sotomayor's testimony today:

Discussion: The Foundry, Don Surber, theblogprof and Bench Memos

Eva Rodriguez / PostPartisan:

Sotomayor's Unconvincing Backpedaling — I'm surprised and disturbed by how many times today Sonia Sotomayor has backed off of or provided less-than-convincing explanations for some of her more controversial speeches about the role of gender and ethnicity in judicial decision-making.

Discussion: Power Line, Pajamas Media, The Corner, Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Hot Air, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, YID With LID, Opinion L.A., TBogg, Maggie's Farm, Macsmind, Commentary, Time, Top of the Ticket, Gateway Pundit and NewsBusters.org

Aaron Blake / The Hill:

GOP hopefuls don't disclose how they'd vote on Sotomayor — Republicans running for the Senate next year, including those scrounging for votes to win difficult primaries, aren't saying how they'd vote on Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court. — Interviews with a dozen Republicans running …

Discussion: Matthew Yglesias

Sheryl Gay Stolberg / New York Times:
Sotomayor Leaves Passion Behind

Discussion: New York Times, The Note, Salon, Balkinization, Los Angeles Times, On Deadline, Time and Taylor Marsh

Charlie Savage / New York Times:
Respecting Precedent, or Settled Law, Unless It's Not Settled

Discussion: The Swamp, ABCNEWS, THE WEEK News & Opinion, Right Wing News, The Politico, QandO, SCOTUSblog, The Confluence and Wonk Room

Byron York / Washington Examiner:
Republicans don't believe Sotomayor's stories

Discussion: Power Line, NY Daily News, Sister Toldjah, Newsweek Blogs, Bench Memos and Committee for Justice Blog

Dana Milbank / Washington Post:
Sotomayor Sticks to Her Guns

Discussion: Slate, The Confluence, The Fix, The Nation, Rough Sketch and The Campaign Spot

Josh Gerstein / The Politico:
GOP not buying ‘Latina’ explanation

Discussion: Politico Live's Blog, Washington Post and New York Times

Laurence Tribe / Washington Post:
The Sotomayor Hearings, Day Two — The Post asked legal experts …

Discussion: GayPatriot, PostPartisan, Reason, National Review, The Volokh Conspiracy and Harry's Place

Gateway Pundit:

OBAMA BOOED IN ST. LOUIS!... And Throws a Sissy Pitch (Video) — Barack Obama Booed at the All-Star Game in St. Louis On Tuesday! — And, he threw a sissy pitch: — It's going to be a rough 4 years. He's only been in office 5 months and he's already getting booed. — ...And protested.

Discussion: JustOneMinute, Scared Monkeys, theblogprof, Pundit & Pundette, No More Mister Nice Blog, Macsmind, PoliGazette, Weasel Zippers and Theo Spark

Duk / Yahoo! Sports:

Obama reps Chicago's South Side, delivers All-Star first pitch — ST LOUIS — Where did it land? Was it a strike or wasn't it? Why didn't the network choose a better camera to shoot from? Those were the questions that viewers of baseball's All-Star Game were asking themselves at home …

Discussion: NO QUARTER, NewsBusters.org, Swampland and Confederate Yankee

Allahpundit / Hot Air:
Video: Even All-Star Game not safe from gratuitous Obama photo ops

Discussion: The Pink Flamingo

Kyle / Right Wing Watch:

CFJ: Obama Is Putting a Terrorist On The Bench! — Yesterday, we noticed that the Committee for Justice had just unveiled two ads calling for Sonia Sotomayor's defeat - one contrasting her to Martin Luther King and the other claiming she wants to “take away your guns.”

Discussion: The Daily Dish, Washington Monthly, Think Progress, TPMDC, Salon, Wonk Room, Pam's House Blend and Committee for Justice Blog

Elizabeth Landau / CNN: Sotomayor: Ivy League was ‘new to me’

WorldNetDaily:

Bombshell: Orders revoked for soldier challenging prez — Major victory for Army warrior questioning Obama's birthplace — A U.S. Army Reserve major from Florida scheduled to report for deployment to Afghanistan within days has had his military orders revoked after arguing he should not be required …

Discussion: Confederate Yankee, Vox Popoli, The Washington Independent, Balloon Juice and Wonkette

Mark Murray / msnbc.com:

Obama: I accept the responsibility — From NBC's Athena Jones — WARREN, Mich. — President Obama had a message for Republican critics who want to pin the country's current economic woes on him: “That's fine. Give it to me.” — With the nation's unemployment rate near 9.5% …

Discussion: Say Anything

Washington Post:
Obama Announces $12 Billion Community College Initiative

Discussion: Think Progress, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press and AmSpecBlog

Myglesias / Matthew Yglesias:

Buchanan: GOP Needs More Race-Baiting, Not Less — A provocative article by Pat Buchanan argues that contrary to conventional wisdom, Republicans shouldn't worry about alienating Hispanic voters, they should just focus on getting white people to like them more: … And he sees race-baiting attacks as the way to do it:

Discussion: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Blogs and Stories and Human Events

Laurie K. Blandford / TCPalm.com:

Port St. Lucie apologizes to Treasure Coast Tea Party — PORT ST. LUCIE — After a week of complaints about a sign at Freedomfest on July 4, city officials apologized to the Treasure Coast Tea Party. — “It was not our intent to interfere or cast dispersions on the tea party,” …

Discussion: Moe_Lane's blog and The Virginian

Jonathan Martin / The Politico:

Dems reject palling around with Palin — Gov. Sarah Palin said last weekend that she'd be willing to campaign for some Democrats when she leaves office later this month. — She may not have many takers. — Interviews with a number of the most conservative Democrats in the House …

Discussion: The Washington Independent and GOP 12

Paul / Power Line:

The great gesturer — Why do so many Senators persist during judicial confirmation hearings in making speeches rather than asking questions? This bipartisan phenomenon plagued the Roberts and Alito hearings, and reared its head again today in the proceedings for Sotomayor. — But why?

Discussion: Sadly, No!

John O'Connor / The State:

Media jostled for access to Sanford — E-mails illustrate frenzy to be the first on the air or in print — National media blitzed Gov. Mark Sanford's staff, offering big ratings and, possibly, a sympathetic venue in an effort to land the first interview with the governor after his six-day trip to Argentina.

Discussion: Think Progress, Ben Smith's Blog, TPMMuckraker, Zandar Versus The Stupid and Eschaton

Fox News:

Upcoming Military Robot Could Feed on Dead Bodies — It could be a combination of 19th-century mechanics, 21st-century technology — and a 20th-century horror movie. — A Maryland company under contract to the Pentagon is working on a steam-powered robot that would fuel itself by gobbling …