Franken shuts down Lieberman on Senate floor  —  WASHINGTON — Democratic Sen. Al Franken took the unusual step Thursday of shutting down Sen. Joe Lieberman on the Senate floor.  —  Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, currently is the target of liberal wrath over his opposition …

DeMint promises to delay health bill, force Christmas Eve vote  —  Sen. Jim DeMint said Thursday he is prepared to use every procedural tool to delay a vote on the Democratic healthcare legislation.  —  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is planning to schedule votes around the clock …

Liberal Revolt on Health Care Stings White House  —  WASHINGTON — In the great health care debate of 2009, President Obama has cast himself as a cold-eyed pragmatist, willing to compromise in exchange for votes.  Now ideology — an uprising on the Democratic left — is smacking the pragmatic president in the face.

Rare gender identity defect hits Gaza families  —  Editor's Note: Watch Connect the World tonight 9pm GMT, 4pm ET.  —  Gaza City (CNN) — Two Palestinian teenagers stroll amid the mounds of rubble left by last year's Israeli military offensive, listening to the tinny beat of a Turkish pop song playing on a cell phone.

Palin cuts vacation short  —  Sarah Palin announced Thursday night that she ended a Hawaii vacation early because of the ruckus raised after she blacked out “McCain” on her sun visor in an effort to elude paparazzi.  —  After the former Alaska governor was photographed on the beach earlier this week …

Monica's back - says Clinton lied  —  In the years since their bitter battle, both former President Bill Clinton and independent counsel Ken Starr have predicted they'd be vindicated in the history books.  —  Now the first definitive history of the Clinton scandal is about to arrive …

Health care and Iraq  —  Steve Benen is right: for the most part the debate among progressives about whether the final product on health reform is worth supporting has been edifying.  Serious people are making serious arguments, in a way that puts conservatives, who have offered nothing but smears and lies, very much to shame.

Five cost controls in the Senate health-care bill  —  One of the impulses you have to resist as a writer is the desire to say things that are new, as opposed to things that you've already learned.  A lot of this post will be stale to longtime readers, but in my chat today, someone asked after the cost controls in the Senate.

GOP senators to block defense bill in bid to delay health-care vote  —  Senate Republicans said Thursday that they would try to filibuster a massive Pentagon bill that funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an unusual move that several acknowledged was an effort to delay President Obama's health-care legislation.

Rand Paul's spokesperson is a Satanic Metal God in KKK gear (5 UPDATES)  —  I know that sounds like quite a statement, but it's, uh, the straight dope.  —  Chris Hightower is the campaign spokesperson for Rand Paul.  The same campaign spokesperson who made an ass of himself a few weeks ago …

Dorgan Accuses White House of Unethically Politicizing Safety Warnings From the FDA  —  We've been aggressively covering the crazy story of the Obama administration crushing drug importation legislation that President Obama campaigned on as a presidential candidate and supported as a U.S. Senator.

Hurry Up and Wait  —  A woman whose name I didn't recognize left a message on my office telephone a few weeks ago.  Identifying herself as a member of Congress, but without telling me what she wanted, she asked me to call her at a private number, not the 225 prefix for telephones in the House of Representatives office buildings.

Matthews: The netroots ‘get their giggles from sitting in the backseat and bitching.’  —  Today on MSNBC's Hardball, Chris Matthews brought on John Heilemann from the New Yorker to talk about President Obama's popularity with Democrats.  When Heilemann noted that the “Democratic left” …

Plouffe Counters Obama's Healthcare Critics  —  David Plouffe, the former campaign manager of Obama for America, has one of the lowest drama-to-power ratios in American politics.  As the Senate wrangling over health care hits solipsistic theatrics, even by Lieberman standards, the President's confidante remains decidedly calm.

President enters fray in Denmark  —  President Barack Obama will arrive in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Friday for the culmination of a climate change summit that has captured the world's attention.  —  Obama has made overhauling the U.S. climate and energy economy a signature issue for his presidency …

DOJ urges federal court to re-open ACORN case  —  The Department of Justice waded into the ACORN legal battle on Thursday, urging a federal court to re-evaluate the constitutionality of lawmakers' move to cut off the organization's funding earlier this year.

Private insurance in theory and in practice  —  One of the givens in this debate is that private insurers are awful.  And in some ways, they are.  But not compared to being uninsured.  I've quite a few friends at lefty institutions, and most all of them get private health-care insurance.

Readers offer more fuel for climate-change debate  —  I'd like to thank Eugene Robinson for highlighting Alaska's achievements on climate change ["Palin's own ‘Climate- gate,’ " op-ed, Dec. 15] and for noting that I've “treated the issue as serious, complex, and worthy of urgent attention,” …

White House Blogger Call: Axelrod Answers Questions on Healthcare Bill  —  Home » Blogs » Susie Madrak's blog  —  You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!  —  DOWNLOADS: 103  —  Information always has a soothing effect on me …

Report: Democratic districts received nearly twice the amount of stimulus funds as GOP districts  —  A new analysis of the $157 billion distributed by the American Reinvestment and Recovery act, popularly known as the stimulus bill, shows that the funds were distributed without regard for what states were most in need of jobs.

Life As Part Of Sully's Brain, Ctd  —  News Busters has a field day with my last post.  Lachlan Markay pretends that my doing research for Andrew is the same as Lynn Vincent writing Sarah Palin's book.  I wish I'd the talent to ghostblog for Andrew.  As I've written numerous times …

From the horse's mouth  —  I FEAR that I am exhausting readers' patience with my continued writing about the Federal Reserve's decision to ignore, more or less, the fact that the unemployment rate in America is at 10% and is unlikely to return to normal levels for at least a half decade.

Progress gives climate deal hope  —  A deal at the UN climate summit looks more likely following a frantic day of behind the scenes diplomacy.  —  China signalled concessions on monitoring of emission curbs, and the US said it would commit money for developing countries.