Why We Must Ration Health Care  —  You have advanced kidney cancer.  It will kill you, probably in the next year or two.  A drug called Sutent slows the spread of the cancer and may give you an extra six months, but at a cost of $54,000.  Is a few more months worth that much?

Meghan McCain Will Be Heard  —  Call her the anti-Ann Coulter or an attention-seeking cynic, the daughter of the former presidential candidate is proving that you can rally for gay marriage and still be Republican.  —  “Does it sound campy to say I love gay men?” asks Meghan McCain …

Coburn might have some “splaining to do”  —  A funny, slightly cringe-inducing exchange just now between Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, who was pressing Sonia Sotomayor on the Second Amendment.  —  Sotomayor, jokingly produced a hypothetical in which she went back to her apartment …

Takeover opportunities grow for House Dems  —  The troubles House campaign committees face when their most vulnerable members run for higher office is a familiar topic for Backroom readers.  But, in this cycle, Republicans are getting hit hard.  —  Rep. Jim Gerlach's (R-Pa.) …

Soldier who says Obama isn't president doesn't have to deploy, Army says  —  U.S. Army Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook, the reserve soldier who says he shouldn't have to go to Afghanistan because he believes Barack Obama was never eligible to be president, has had his deployment orders revoked, Army officials said.

Rube Goldberg Already Lives Here  —  House Republicans today released a chart depicting what health care in America would look like if the House Democrats get their way.  It's confusing, if colorful—full of boxes, lines, and all sorts of hard-to-say acronyms.  Which, of course, is the point.

Huckabee warns Palin: Don't leave GOP  —  (CNN) — Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has a warning for Sarah Palin: Don't abandon the Republican Party.  —  The former presidential candidate and potential future White House rival of Palin's said Tuesday he's concerned about speculation …

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.

As Republicans gain control, face of Oklahoma Democrats changes  —  Democratic Congressman Dan Boren sits behind a desk with two bucks mounted on wooden plaques peering over each of his shoulders.  The sleeves of his button-down shirt are rolled almost to his elbows, and like everyone milling about outside, he is sweaty.

Police kill suspected shooter  —  Police shot and killed a man near Upper Senate Park Wednesday after he attempted to flee from a traffic stop, officials said.  —  In a statement emailed to reporters, the Capitol Police said the shooting was “an isolated incident unrelated to the security …

Could we be wrong about global warming?  —  Could the best climate models — the ones used to predict global warming — all be wrong?  —  Maybe so, says a new study published online today in the journal Nature Geoscience.  The report found that only about half of the warming that occurred during …

Why We Beltway Elites Like Sotomayor More Than Palin  —  I think Matt Yglesias makes the important points about this race-obsessed column from Pat Buchanan.  (Buchanan's admirably-frank-but-morally- repugnant argument is that Republicans should ignore the supposed demographic torpedoes …

Calpers: Rating Agencies to Blame for Huge Losses  —  Way back when, I mentioned there was a surprise coming S&P's way.  Since it is now out there officially, I can discuss it publicly.  —  After the brouhaha with McGraw Hill began, I was contacted by numerous people — mostly readers emailing words of support.

Bush's Justice Dept. blacklisted LGBT groups  —  Affiliation with Immigration Equality, GMHC may have doomed intern candidates  —  Applicants for Justice Department internships and honors programs may have been rejected based on their membership in LGBT groups during the Bush administration, the Blade has learned.

Fundraising Corruption at Human Rights Watch  —  An on-line Wall Street Journal op-ed posted two days ago alleged that Human Rights Watch officials went trolling for dollars in Saudi Arabia, and that the organization's senior Middle East official, Sarah Leah Whitson, attempted to extract money …

‘COMINSKEY FIELD’?  PRESIDENT OBAMA BOTCHES NAME OF HOME OF HIS BELOVED WHITE SOX  —  “I do think that there's a different quality to what used to be Cominskey Field vs. Wrigley,” President Obama told Bob Costas during an interview that aired during Tuesday night's MLB All-Star Game.

Liberal Law Professor: Sotomayor Either Perjuring Herself or Unqualified  —  He's not addressing her Wise Latina denials, but rather her claim that judging involves nothing but application of the law to facts.  She says this, of course, to denigrate the role her racialist ideology might play …

New Policy Permits Asylum for Battered Women  —  The Obama administration has opened the way for foreign women who are victims of severe domestic beatings and sexual abuse to receive asylum in the United States.  The action reverses a Bush administration stance in a protracted …

Ricci and the future of race in America  —  We're witnessing the beginning of the end of affirmative action.  —  Discrimination in employment on the basis of race, sex, skin color, ethnicity, or national origin is a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  Yet that fact seems to either …

Keep It Simple — The Case Against Comprehensive Reform  —  Writing in Salon, Michael Lind argues “against comprehensive reform — on any issue.”  It's music to my ears.  In cautioning against “giant, complicated, omnibus pieces of legislation that are supposed to solve multiple problems …

Poor, Persecuted Sarah Palin  —  The GOP embraces the culture of victimhood.  —  Printer  —  Friendly  —  When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announced her resignation two weeks ago it was after a series of strange, petty bouts with her detractors.  Many “frivolous ethics violations” had been alleged against her, she noted.

Deficits saved the world  —  Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs has a new note (no link) responding to claims that government support for the economy is postponing the necessary adjustment.  He doesn't think much of that argument; neither do I. But one passage in particular caught my eye:

Foreign Policy Address at the Council on Foreign Relations  —  Washington, DC  —  Thank you very much, Richard, and I am delighted to be here in these new headquarters.  I have been often to, I guess, the mother ship in New York City, but it's good to have an outpost of the Council right …

Bruno banned from text book  —  Politically correct German education officials have ordered a character called Bruno in a new children's book to be renamed Aydan.  —  Officials in Hamburg were reportedly unhappy at having a character with the same name as Sacha Baron Cohen's Nazi-praising Austrian journalist Bruno.

Palin: All Tail, No Head  —  Sarah Palin's political action committee — SarahPAC — raised $733,000 in the first half of the year and is set to push past $1 million in the wake of the recent attention she's gotten herself.  On the one hand, this isn't that impressive.  Mitt Romney, for instance, has raised twice as much.