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Greg Sargent / The Plum Line:
Howard Dean: “Kill The Senate Bill” — In a blow to the bill grinding through the Senate, Howard Dean bluntly called for the bill to be killed in a pre-recorded interview set to air later this afternoon, denouncing it as “the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate,” the reporter who conducted the interview tells me.
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New York Times:
Lieberman Gets Ex-Party to Shift on Health Plan — WASHINGTON — Just the thought of Joseph I. Lieberman makes some Democrats want to spit nails these days. But Mr. Lieberman, the Connecticut independent, is not the least troubled by his status as Capitol Hill's master infuriator …
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Byron York / Washington Examiner:
Why Democrats push health care, even if it kills them — To some observers, the Democrats' race to pass national health care seems irrational — even suicidal. Don't party leaders understand how much the public opposes the bills currently on the table? Don't they know that voters are likely …
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The Jawa Report, The Lonely Conservative, Wake up America, Townhall.com, Pundit & Pundette and Commentary
Steve Benen / Washington Monthly:
WEINER SCARED LIEBERMAN AWAY?.... Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) spoke with reporters this morning about the state of the health care debate. Lieberman said that if the leadership meets his conditions — no public option, no Medicare buy-in — “I'm going to be in a position …
John Aravosis / AMERICAblog News:
The GOP had at most 55 Senators during Bush's presidency — I've heard people say that it's not fair to criticize the Democrats for botching health care reform because the Democrats never truly had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Sure, they have 60 votes in principle …
Nate Silver / FiveThirtyEight:
Why Progressives Are Bats**t Crazy to Oppose the Senate Bill — Pick your subheadline: — a) It's time to stop being polite and start getting real. — b) Here's hoping a picture is worth 1,000 words. — Any questions? — OK, I imagine that there will be a few. Here's how I came up with these numbers.
Ezra Klein:
Is the Senate health-care reform bill still worth passing? — “Insurance companies win,” Markos Moulitsas tweeted last night. “Time to kill this monstrosity coming out of the Senate.” — This was, for progressives, a frustrating vote. But the flip side of it being morally unconscionable …
Jonathan Cohn / The New Republic:
What Public Option Supporters Won — The public option is dead this morning. And this time, it isn't coming back to life. The Senate isn't going to include any version of the idea in its bill. And while the House can still demand a public option in conference, nobody I know expects the House to prevail.
Jeffrey Young / The Hill:
Snowe has ‘misgivings’ about health bill, Christmas vote — Democrats from the White House to Capitol Hill are still holding out hopes of winning the support of Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine) for their healthcare bill. But despite major concessions made to centrist Democrats, Snowe has not yet jumped aboard.
The Politico:
Obama: ‘Cautiously optimistic’ on bill
Obama: ‘Cautiously optimistic’ on bill
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Buddy Winston / The Huffington Post:
Bill O'reilly Admits Obama is Smarter than George W. Bush
Bill O'reilly Admits Obama is Smarter than George W. Bush
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Mediaite
Michael O'Brien / The Hill:
Lieberman: Emerging Senate health bill ‘an historic achievement’
Lieberman: Emerging Senate health bill ‘an historic achievement’
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The Politico
Dominic Lawson / Times of London:
Inconvenient truth for Al Gore as his North Pole sums don't add up — Hannah Devlin, Ben Webster, Philippe Naughton in Copenhagen — There are many kinds of truth. Al Gore was poleaxed by an inconvenient one yesterday. — The former US Vice-President, who became an unlikely figurehead …
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Michael Goldfarb / Weekly Standard:
Source: Dems Threaten Nelson In Pursuit of 60 — While the Democrats appease Senator Lieberman, they still have to worry about other recalcitrant Democrats including Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson. Though Lieberman has been out front in the fight against the public option and the Medicare buy-in, Nelson was critical of both.
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Eliot Van Buskirk / Epicenter:
Pranksters Make Short Work of GOP's URL Shortener for Conservatives — The Republican National Committee's GOP.am home page was offline Tuesday morning, and several URLs entered into the system by pranksters have been blocked. — Revised and expanded at 12:50 ET, with comment from Political Media president Larry Ward.
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Gerry Tuoti / The Taunton Gazette News RSS:
Taunton second-grader suspended over drawing of Jesus — A Taunton father is outraged after his 8-year-old son was sent home from school and required to undergo a psychological evaluation after drawing a stick-figure picture of Jesus Christ on the cross. — The father said he got …
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FOX News Radio, Stop The ACLU, The Lonely Conservative, Michelle Malkin and Joanne Jacobs
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John Tierney / New York Times:
Trusting Nature as the Climate Referee — Imagine there's no Copenhagen. — Imagine a planet in which global warming was averted without the periodic need for thousands of people to fly around the world to promise to stop burning fossil fuels. Imagine no international conferences wrangling over the details of climate policy.
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Daily Express:
CLIMATE CHANGE IS NATURAL: 100 REASONS WHY — HERE are the 100 reasons, released in a dossier issued by the European Foundation, why climate change is natural and not man-made: — 1) There is “no real scientific proof” that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man's activity.
Ed Morrissey / Hot Air:
Edwards' contacts with witnesses raises red flags — Witness tampering allegations appear to be the rage these days. Yesterday, the Anchorage Daily News detailed allegations that prosecutors covered up tampering attempts by one of their star witnesses in their corruption cases.
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POWIP
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Susan Stabley / bizjournals:
Report: John Edwards bought Charlotte home for former mistress Rielle Hunter
Report: John Edwards bought Charlotte home for former mistress Rielle Hunter
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The Charlotte Observer
Andrew Ross Sorkin / New York Times:
Putting Obama on Hold, in a Hint of Who's Boss — President Obama didn't exactly look thrilled as he stared at the Polycom speakerphone in front of him. “Well, I appreciate you guys calling in,” he began the meeting at the White House with Wall Street's top brass on Monday.
David Brooks / New York Times:
Obama's Christian Realism — If you were graduating from Princeton in the first part of the 20th century, you probably heard the university president, John Hibben, deliver one of his commencement addresses. Hibben's running theme, which was common at that time, was that each person is part angel, part devil.
Discussion:
Matthew Yglesias, Atlantic Correspondents, Spiritual Politics, The Other McCain and normblog
The Huffington Post:
Rep. Capuano Tells Fellow Dems: 'You're Screwed' — WHAT'S YOUR REACTION? — When House Democrats gathered on Friday for their end-of-the week caucus meeting in the basement of the Capitol, caucus chairman John Larson (D-Conn.) told the group he wanted them to hear first from Rep. Michael Capuano …
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Eschaton
Tom Jensen / Public Policy Polling:
Herseth Sandlin's Standing — The Democratic brand in South Dakota is not very strong right now, and that has Stephanie Herseth Sandlin looking at her toughest fight for reelection since 2004 next year despite the fact that she herself is pretty popular. — 52% of voters in the state disapprove …