Top Items:
New York Times:
Delaying Vote, Debt Panel Splits on Taxes and Spending — WASHINGTON — The chairmen of President Obama's debt-reduction commission have been unable to win support from any of the panel's elected officials for their proposed spending cuts and tax increases, underscoring the reluctance …
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Steve Benen / Washington Monthly:
ALL 42 SENATE REPUBLICANS ANNOUNCE HOSTAGE PLAN.... The AP had an item late last night, noting that Senate Republicans were circulating a letter, “quietly collecting signatures” on a plan to “block action on virtually all Democratic-backed legislation unrelated to tax cuts and government spending.”
Discussion:
Republican.Senate.Gov, Taylor Marsh, No More Mister Nice Blog, Sister Toldjah, The Impolitic and Balloon Juice
Jane Hamsher / Firedoglake:
Fiscal Commission Final Report — Get your fresh catfood! — FDL has obtained a copy of the Catfood Commission final report in advance of its official 9:30 release. — It can be downloaded here: PDF — Their reigning spirit of self-importance comes through on the very first page: “The Moment of Truth.”
Discussion:
Paul Krugman, Salon, Wake up America, Crooks and Liars and Lawyers, Guns & Money
John Stanton / Roll Call:
House May Block Food Safety Bill Over Senate Error — A food safety bill that has burned up precious days of the Senate's lame-duck session appears headed back to the chamber because Democrats violated a constitutional provision requiring that tax provisions originate in the House.
Brian Beutler / TPMDC:
DADT No More? Republicans Threaten To Block All Dem Initiatives — Just hours after Democrats and Republicans agreed to bargain on tax cuts, and fewer hours still after Defense Secretary Robert Gates implored Congress to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell this year, word leaked that Republicans …
Discussion:
Guardian, DownWithTyranny!, Salon, Swampland, TPMMuckraker, Zandar Versus The Stupid, MyDD, Talking Points Memo, Wonkette, EconoSpeak, Joe. My. God. and The Huffington Post
Lori Montgomery / Washington Post:
Commission's final deficit report preserves controversial spending cuts; panel to vote Friday on whether to endorse plan — The leaders of President Obama's fiscal commission released a final report Wednesday that is full of political dynamite, including sharp cuts in military spending …
Andrew Sullivan / The Daily Dish:
The Dickishness Of The GOP — What we've observed these past two years is a political party that knows nothing but scorched earth tactics, cannot begin to see any merits in the other party's arguments, refuses to compromise one inch on anything, and has sought from the very beginning to do nothing but destroy the Obama presidency.
Discussion:
Balloon Juice
David Leonhardt / New York Times:
In Tax Cuts, the Options Run Short
Discussion:
Fox News, Gallup, The Hill, The Politico, Washington Post, Gawker, The Caucus, Politics Daily, Wake up America, Prairie Weather, Connecting.the.Dots, The Hill, Unfogged and TalkLeft
Jake Sherman / The Politico:
House Democrats set Thursday tax vote
Discussion:
CNN, The Huffington Post and Swampland
Alexander Bolton / The Hill:
Kyl: Tax deal needs to get done by Monday to pass START in lame-duck
Discussion:
ThinkProgress, TPMDC, Wonk Room, Daily Kos, FrumForum and National Review
Ed Morrissey / Hot Air:
GOP readies rarely-used procedural attack on EPA aggression
Discussion:
Sister Toldjah and The Politico
Chris Good / The Atlantic Online:
All About the Tax Cuts — Nothing will happen in Congress …
Discussion:
Washington Post, Colorlines, RedState, Prairie Weather and Hotline On Call
David Kurtz / Talking Points Memo:
Why The GOP Is Like Bear Bryant
Discussion:
TalkLeft and The Caucus
Ezra Klein:
Republicans give their definition of ‘bipartisanship’
Discussion:
The Huffington Post, Moe Lane, Facebook and CBS News
Jennifer Steinhauer / The Caucus:
Senate Republicans: No Legislation Until After Tax Cut Extension
Discussion:
Bloomberg, Mediaite, Colorado Independent and Gawker
Ross Douthat:
The Ambitions of Julian Assange — Will Wilkinson makes the case for Julian Assange: … If it's the best we can hope for, then we're in even more trouble than I thought. The problem of the permanent state is a real one, but occasional mass data dumps like the one WikiLeaks just provided …
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Glenn Greenwald / Salon:
The moral standards of WikiLeaks critics — (updated below - Update II) — Time's Joe Klein writes this about the WikiLeaks disclosures: … Do you have that principle down? If “a single foreign national is rounded up and put in jail” because of the WikiLeaks disclosure — even a …
Discussion:
The Daily Dish, Swampland, Guardian, Left Coast Rebel and zunguzungu
The Huffington Post:
Ted Strickland: Democrats Suffering From ‘Intellectual Elitism’ — WHAT'S YOUR REACTION? … WASHINGTON — Fresh off a narrow loss in his gubernatorial re-election campaign, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland on Wednesday offered some somber and sober-minded criticism for his own party and president.
Discussion:
Guardian, Raw Story, Verum Serum, The Plum Line, The New Republic, ABCNEWS and CNN
Ed Rollins / CNN:
Palin, I knew Reagan. You're no Reagan. — Editor's note: Ed Rollins, a senior political contributor for CNN, is senior presidential fellow at the Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency at Hofstra University. He is a principal with the Dilenschneider Group, a global public relations firm.
Discussion:
JustOneMinute, Hot Air and Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion
Allahpundit / Hot Air:
Pentagon: We could have shut down Wikileaks but chose not to — I hope he's telling the truth. Because if our cyberwar unit is so weak that they can't hit a few servers in Sweden, then I, for one, welcome our new Chinese overlords. The key question: Was this decision driven chiefly by military or political concerns?
Discussion:
The Daily Caller, Gothamist and Right Wing News
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Peter Svensson / Associated Press:
WikiLeaks site kicked off Amazon's servers
Discussion:
TechCrunch, Gawker, Gizmodo, The Jawa Report and Zandar Versus The Stupid, more at Techmeme »
Ewen MacAskill / Guardian:
WikiLeaks website pulled by Amazon after US political pressure
Discussion:
RedState, Washington Post, Spiegel Online, The Firewall, Mediaite and Boing Boing, more at Techmeme »
Tara Palmeri / New York Post:
Co-host spittin' mad over Spitzer — Tweet — Eliot Spitzer's TV sidekick is so fed up with playing second fiddle to the hooker-loving ex-gov that she's threatening to walk, sources told The Post yesterday. — Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker actually stormed off the set of the …
Myglesias / Yglesias:
Bowles-Simpson vs Current Law — Surely the strangest thing about the Bowles-Simpson debt reduction plan is that, relative to current law, it . . . increases the public debt load over the next ten years: — Obviously starting around 2020 or so Bowles-Simpson starts doing better than current law …
Discussion:
FT Alphaville, Daily Kos, The Daily Dish and Grasping Reality …
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Chris Cillizza / The Fix:
RNC official admits to a “cashflow challenge” — In a memo sent to vendors Tuesday, the Republican National Committee's chief administrative officer acknowledged that the committee is facing a “cashflow challenge” and that many of those who provided political services to it during the 2010 election …
Discussion:
ThinkProgress, CNN, TPMDC, Mediaite and Gawker
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Alexander Mooney / CNN:
Cheney to co-host fundraiser for Cino in RNC race
Discussion:
The Hill, The Daily Caller, The Politico, FrumForum, Ben Smith's Blog and TPMDC
Tom Jensen / Public Policy Polling:
Missouri Senate Race Close — Claire McCaskill was involved in incredibly close races for Governor in 2004 and Senator in 2006 from Missouri and it looks like she's in for another one as she seeks reelection to the Senate in 2012. McCaskill leads Sarah Steelman by 1 point (45-44) …
Discussion:
Taegan Goddard's …
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Jake Wagman / St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
Steelman makes it official: Running for Senate in '12
Discussion:
Politics Daily, The Politico, TPMDC and Hotline On Call
Yves Smith / naked capitalism:
Matt Stoller: End This Fed — By Matt Stoller, the former Senior Policy Advisor for Rep. Alan Grayson. His Twitter feed is @matthewstoller … Something new is happening around the contours of monetary policy. It's becoming part of our popular political landscape.
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Robin Bravender / The Politico:
In Memoriam: House climate committee — The House Democrats' prized global warming committee died quietly on Wednesday. — It was four years old. — Created in 2007 by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to draw attention to the causes and effects of climate change …
Discussion:
Alan Colmes' Liberaland, Washington Post, Wonkette, Watts Up With That? and Hit & Run
Andrew Sullivan / The Daily Dish:
The Right Under Bush vs The Left Under Obama — Ross sharpens his point: … On the last point, I don't believe drone attacks are morally more troubling than torture (if Ross reads his catechism, he'll come to the same conclusion) - and dismayed that Ross would use the Orwellian term …
Discussion:
Ross Douthat and Comments from Left Field
Jon Bershad / Mediaite:
Pentagon Spokesman: We Could Have Shut Down WikiLeaks, But We Decided Not To — Throughout all the fallout of WikiLeaks' latest release, many have been asking why the government didn't stop the organization before the cables were released (For instance, Glenn Beck compared it to the ease with which they shut down other illegal sites).
Discussion:
Alan Colmes' Liberaland, Taylor Marsh and Weasel Zippers
Juliet Eilperin / Post Carbon:
Obama administration reimposes offshore oil drilling ban — Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Wednesday afternoon that the Obama administration will not allow offshore oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico or off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as part of the next five-year drilling plan …
Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo:
Big Web — Amazon has terminated the account of Wikileaks and apparently the site has been down most of the day. Joe Lieberman has issued a statement on Amazon's decision. Amazon has not commented directly on what happened to Wikileaks account. But they appear to have told Lieberman …
Discussion:
Mashable!, msnbc.com, Little Green Footballs, Mediaite and Balloon Juice
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