Top Items:
Frank Phillips / Boston Globe:
Kennedy, looking ahead, urges that Senate seat be filled quickly — Seeks law change for interim post — Senator Edward M. Kennedy, in a poignant acknowledgment of his mortality at a critical time in the national health care debate, has privately asked the governor and legislative leaders …
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Wall Street Journal:
New Rx for Health Plan: Split Bill — The White House and Senate Democratic leaders, seeing little chance of bipartisan support for their health-care overhaul, are considering a strategy shift that would break the legislation into two parts and pass the most expensive provisions solely with Democratic votes.
Discussion:
Ezra Klein, The Moderate Voice, MoJo Blog Posts, The Atlantic Politics Channel, The Note, The Politico, FiveThirtyEight, Hot Air, MyDD, Glenn Thrush's Blog, Salon, Raleigh News & Observer, Open Left, Patterico's Pontifications, Health Care Policy …, The Foundry, Balkinization, Outside The Beltway, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, Democratic Strategist, TPMDC, Washington Monthly, The Treatment, Grasping Reality …, Blog entry, Washington Post, Obsidian Wings, TalkLeft and Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog!
Washington Post:
Grassley Urges Scaling Back on Health-Care Reform Plan, Citing Town Hall Anger — Republican Grassley Cites Town Hall Anger — Sen. Charles E. Grassley, a key Republican negotiator in the quest for bipartisan health-care reform, said Wednesday that the outpouring of anger at town hall meetings …
Discussion:
Fox News, Think Progress, The New Republic, The Washington Independent, Washington Monthly, Wake up America, Liberal Values, The Confluence, Bloomberg, Los Angeles Times, Political Punch, No More Mister Nice Blog, Open Left, The Plum Line, Left in the West, Associated Press, WSJ.com and Media Matters Action Network
Myglesias / Matthew Yglesias:
Republicans Calling for Super-Supermajority for Health Care — In order to become law, a health care bill needs to secure a majority on the House Ways & Means Committee and also the House Energy & Commerce Committee and also the House Education & Labor Committee and, of course, the full United States House of Representatives.
Allahpundit / Hot Air:
Unreal: MSNBC edits clip of man with gun at Obama rally to support racism narrative — I missed this yesterday at Newsbusters but Treacher, rightly aghast, tipped me to it this afternoon. Never will you see a starker example of MSNBC getting away with the sort of deception for which Fox News …
Discussion:
Michael Calderone's Blog, The Moderate Voice, Mudville Gazette, Patterico's Pontifications, The Jawa Report, Polimom, Too, Reason, Reclusive Leftist, Scared Monkeys, QandO, The Confluence, Neptunus Lex, Don Surber, Confederate Yankee, Moe_Lane's blog, Pundit & Pundette, Blue Crab Boulevard and TigerHawk
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Ace of Spades HQ:
Oh, My: MSNBC Carefully Crops Shot of Black Man Carrying AR-15 at Healt Care Rally to Avoid Skin Color, So They Can Then Rant and Rave About “White People” Showing Up With Guns When a “Person of Color” is President — Oh yes they did. — Allah is outraged, as is the Newsbusters which found this (or rather their partner/parent MRC).
Discussion:
American Power, Macsmind, IMAO, Confederate Yankee, TBogg, Reason and The Sundries Shack
US News:
Tom Ridge on National Security After 9/11 — Tom Ridge, the first head of the 9/11-inspired Department of Homeland Security, wasn't keen on writing a tell-all. But in The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege...and How We Can Be Safe Again, out September 1, Ridge says he wants to shake “public complacency” over security.
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Faiz Shakir / Think Progress:
Ridge admits Bush administration pushed to raise security alert for political reasons on eve of re-election. — Former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is releasing a book on September 1 titled, “The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege...and How We Can Be Safe Again.”
Mike Soraghan / The Hill:
Left flexes muscles on healthcare reform — The fury from the left about President Barack Obama's shift on a public option has raised the prospect of House liberals joining together to defeat a healthcare bill that doesn't meet their standards. — Heading into the August recess …
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Washington Post:
Poll Shows Most Americans Oppose War in Afghanistan — A majority of Americans now see the war in Afghanistan as not worth fighting, and just a quarter say more U.S. troops should be sent to the country, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. — Most have confidence in the ability …
Discussion:
Townhall.com, The Atlantic Politics Channel, The Huffington Post, Think Progress, Associated Press, The AfPak Channel, Guardian, Commentary, BBC, Top of the Ticket, TPMDC, Informed Comment, The Moderate Voice, Raw Story, Taylor Marsh, The Reaction, The Nation, Hullabaloo, Matthew Yglesias, New York Times, Hot Air and ParaPundit
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Myglesias / Matthew Yglesias:
The Limits of Incrementalism — A disheartened Ezra Klein looks at a WSJ/NBC poll showing that people have lots of false beliefs about the president's health care agenda and offers the following chart: — My first thought is “reform opponents are lying like crazy and it's working.”
Discussion:
Obsidian Wings
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New York Times:
Scotland Lets Lockerbie Convict Return to Libya — LONDON — Despite strenuous American opposition, the Scottish government on Thursday ordered the release on compassionate grounds of the only person convicted in the Lockerbie bombing, permitting Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi …
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Mark Mazzetti / New York Times:
C.I.A. Sought Blackwater's Help in Plan to Kill Jihadists — WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials.
Steven Erlanger / New York Times:
A Good-News Photo Op Embarrasses 2 French Ministers — PARIS — It was apparently just a little summertime spinning with the aid of a grocery chain, but Luc Chatel, the education minister and government spokesman, found himself in some hot water over a supposedly staged visit to a quiet supermarket on Monday.
Mike / The Baseline Scenario:
Has Mortgage Modification failed? — Obama's mortgage modification plan, HAMP (Home Afforable Modification Program), isn't working very well. Designed to help prevent foreclosures by incentivizing and giving legal protection to previously indifferent middle-men servicers it isn't producing anywhere near …
Discussion:
Felix Salmon
Ed Kilgore / The New Republic:
Don't Sweat It — Obama sure looks to be in trouble, but we've seen this summertime hysteria before. — As the Dog Days of August descended upon us, there developed across the progressive chattering classes a deep sense of malaise bordering on depression, if not panic …
Michael Cooper / New York Times:
Government Jobs Have Grown Since Recession — While the private sector has shed 6.9 million jobs since the beginning of the recession, state and local governments have expanded their payrolls and added 110,000 jobs, according to a report issued Thursday by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government.
Edmund L. Andrews / New York Times:
Bernanke, a Hero to His Own, Can't Shake Critics — WASHINGTON — Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, no longer looks sleep-deprived. — He still works seven days a week, but earlier this month he took two days off — for the first time in two years — to attend his son's wedding.
Discussion:
Matthew Yglesias, MoJo Blog Posts, naked capitalism, The Other McCain, The BLT and Vox Popoli
Joe Klein / Time:
The GOP Has Become a Party of Nihilists — In one of those awful collisions between public policy and real life, I was in the midst of an awkward conversation about end-of-life issues with my father when Sarah Palin raised the remarkable idea that the Obama Administration's attempt to include …
Andy Barr / The Politico:
Pawlenty: Voters ‘ticked off and scared’ — Minnesota GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty, best known among Republicans for his fiscal record, has discovered a policy niche that is beginning to pay dividends for his prospective 2012 presidential bid: health care. — Though party insiders tend …
Tom Jensen / Public Policy Polling:
Huckabee continues to come closest for 2012 — Our fifth monthly national survey matching up Barack Obama against some possible 2012 opponents comes to the same two primary conclusions as the other four: — 1) Obama leads all comers — 2) Mike Huckabee, at least at this early stage, is the strongest GOP candidate
Discussion:
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