memeorandum: Medicaid expansion becomes weapon against GOP governors (Greg Sargent/The Plum Line)

11:35 PM ET, December 3, 2013

Top Items:

Chuck Schumer Slams Liberal Blogs, Analyzes Ted Cruz, and Explains How He Helped Elect Elizabeth Warren — An interview — “I feel better with my feet up,” Senator Charles Schumer said when we sat down in his spacious Washington office. His knees are bad, he explained.

Discussion: Politico, Balloon Juice, Post Politics, Mock Paper Scissors, Shakesville, Outside the Beltway, Daily Kos, No More Mister Nice Blog, Talking Points Memo, The Dish and Althouse

Hunter / Daily Kos:

Why the Third Way hates Sen. Elizabeth Warren — And the war is on. — The obsessive centrists of the punditverse were abuzz today with praise for supposed centrist Democratic organization Third Way and their grumbling op-ed condemnation of Democratic liberal populism in abstract and …

Discussion: Hullabaloo

Wall Street Journal:

Cowan and Kessler: Economic Populism Is a Dead End for Democrats — The de Blasio-Warren agenda won't travel. Colorado is the real political harbinger. — If you talk to leading progressives these days, you'll be sure to hear this message: The Democratic Party should embrace …

Discussion: Campaign for America's Future, Daily Kos, AMERICAblog News, ThinkProgress and Washington Post

Mario Trujillo / The Hill:
Schumer says he offered Brown a pass in 2012

Discussion: Booman Tribune

Andrew Sullivan / The Dish:

Rush Limbaugh Knows Nothing About Christianity — [Re-posted from earlier today.] — Well, after Sarah Palin, another scholar of Catholicism has weighed in on Pope Francis. Rush Limbaugh has a truly gold-star hathos alert in a recent diatribe, brilliantly titled:

Discussion: Mediaite, Michael-In-Norfolk, The Immoral Minority and Washington Monthly

Yasmine Hafiz / The Huffington Post:
Is Pope Francis Leaving Vatican At Night To Minister To Homeless?

Discussion: ThinkProgress, CNA Daily News, Feed RSS, Religion News Service, Via Meadia, Gawker and The Daily Caller

David Harsanyi / The Federalist:
What The Pope Gets Wrong About Capitalism

Discussion: Cafe Hayek and American Spectator

Caitlin MacNeal / Talking Points Memo:
Limbaugh Accuses Pope Francis Of ‘Pure Marxism’

Discussion: The Moderate Voice, PERRspectives, Sky Dancing, The Sensible Center and CNN

Noah Rothman / Mediaite:

Rothman: Obama Breaks Glass on Chris Matthews: The Latest in a String of Panicky Decisions — For years, MSNBC host Chris Matthews has been sitting patiently behind the emergency glass waiting for President Barack Obama to come wildly swinging the ax of panic.

Discussion: Washington Post, The Daily Caller, Ed Driscoll, TheBlaze.com, VodkaPundit, Washington Free Beacon and National Review

Justin Sink / The Hill:

Obama: 'We're not going back' — President Obama declared Tuesday that ObamaCare “is working” and that “we're not going back,” as the White House looked to reboot its efforts to sell Americans on the president's signature healthcare law. — Obama said that “poor execution” …

Washington Post:

Health-care enrollment on Web plagued by bugs — The enrollment records for a significant portion of the Americans who have chosen health plans through the online federal insurance marketplace contain errors — generated by the computer system — that mean they might not get the coverage they're expecting next month.

Kate Nocera / BuzzFeed:
Democrats Form Obamacare “Strike Teams” To Sell Troubled Law

Discussion: NBCNews, CNN, National Republican …, Politico, Weasel Zippers and Business Insider

Jose DelReal / Politico:

Michele Bachmann: Obama rewrote Constitution — Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) on Tuesday accused President Barack Obama of “rewriting the constitution” for his political agenda, particularly in the case of his signature health care law. — “He has rewritten the Constitution for himself …

Discussion: Daily Kos, The Huffington Post and Crooks and Liars

David Edwards / The Raw Story:
Michele Bachmann: President Obama ‘has rewritten the Constitution for himself’

Discussion: Liberaland

Ashley Killough / CNN:
Clinton defends calling on Obama to keep his word

Discussion: Politico and Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion

Greg Sargent / The Plum Line:

Medicaid expansion becomes weapon against GOP governors — It's widely accepted as an article of faith that Obamacare will be uniformly bad politics for Dems in 2014. After all, the rollout is a disaster and majorities disapprove of the law, so how could it possibly be any other way, right?

Discussion: The Moderate Voice, Liberaland, PostPartisan and Politico

JSOnline:

Scott Walker campaign aide fired after tweets demeaning Hispanics — These tweets were sent from Taylor Palmisano's Twitter account. Expletives have been blurred out. — For the second time in less than four months, Gov. Scott Walker has fired an aide for making demeaning comments about Hispanics on social media.

Discussion: The Raw Story, Politico, Talking Points Memo, Gawker, Cognitive Dissidence, ABC News, The Other McCain and Daily Kos

ThinkProgress:
Governor Tells Supporters To Forgo Buying Children Presents, Give Money To His Campaign Instead

Discussion: The Raw Story, The Immoral Minority, The Dish, addictinginfo.org and Taking Note

Guardian:

ALEC facing funding crisis from donor exodus in wake of Trayvon Martin row — • Rightwing lobby group appealing to major donors to return — • Internal documents reveal so-called ‘Prodigal Son Project’ — • Network lost almost 400 state legislators over past two years

Discussion: Firedoglake, Talking Points Memo, Gawker, ThinkProgress, Crooks and Liars, Daily Kos and ALEC

Washington Post:

Guardian: We have published 1 pct of Snowden leak — The editor of the Guardian said Tuesday his newspaper has published just 1 percent of the material it received from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, and denied the paper had placed lives or national security at risk.

Discussion: The Daily Caller and Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, more at Mediagazer »

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Ingraham gets comic book treatment — Laura Ingraham — the conservative radio host, Fox News contributor and former Reagan administration speechwriter — gets the comic book treatment. No joke: … Preview here. (h/t Isaac Dovere).

Discussion: National Review

Murray Weiss / DNAinfo.com New York:

Metro-North Engineer Dozing Seconds Before Train Derailment, Sources Say — MANHATTAN — Investigators believe the motorman at the controls in the deadly Metro-North Railroad derailment in the Bronx Sunday dozed off for a few fateful moments and woke up too late to stop the speeding train …

Discussion: Gothamist, Mashable, Runnin' Scared, New York Post, Shakesville, The Hinterland Gazette, Mediaite, Politico, ANIMAL, Gawker and New York Times

The Christian / Associated Press:
NYC train derailment: A case for crash-avoidance technology?

Discussion: The Reaction

ACLU:

Pregnant Woman Suffers. You Won't Believe Who's to Blame. — When you show up at a hospital, in need of medical aid, you expect that you're going to get the care that you need—that the doctors and nurses will figure out what's wrong, explain to you the options for treating it, and give you the best medical care possible.

Discussion: Associated Press, ThinkProgress, The Raw Story, Taylor Marsh, The Daily Caller, The Immoral Minority, Shakesville, NBCNews and Wonkblog

Scott Brown / Fox News:

Stunning hypocrisy from Democrats in wake of ObamaCare's broken promises — Hypocrisy and double standards are two things that disgust and infuriate all Americans, regardless of where they fall on the ideological spectrum. — Unfortunately, these qualities are far too prevalent …

Discussion: The Hill, Roll Call, The Fix, Politico, CNN, Talking Points Memo and Post Politics

John Nolte / BREITBART.COM:

POLLS SHOW OBAMACARE WAVE BUILDING AGAINST SENATE DEMOCRATS — Recent polling shows that an election wave of anti-ObamaCare sentiment is growing, and it is not only likely to hand the GOP control of the United States Senate, but might wipe out as many as 12 Democrat seats—many of which looked safe just a few months ago.

Discussion: Power Line and VodkaPundit

Abby D. Phillip / ABC News:

Dick Cheney Surprised by Facebook ‘Attack’ on Daughter Liz in Gay Marriage Spat — Former Vice President Dick Cheney reluctantly commented today on the rift between his two daughters Liz and Mary Cheney, saying that he was surprised that Mary, who is lesbian, and her wife attacked Liz on Facebook.

Discussion: Politico

Ryan J. Reilly / The Huffington Post:

The Obama Administration Took The Platinum Coin Option More Seriously Than It Let On — WASHINGTON — The Obama administration was serious enough about manufacturing a high-value platinum coin to avert a congressional fight over the debt ceiling that it had its top lawyers draw up a memo laying …

Discussion: Weasel Zippers, Mediaite, Business Insider and Washington Monthly

Sean Davis / The Federalist:

No, America Doesn't Have Too Many Banks — “America has 6,891 banks,” Slate blogger and certified financial non-expert Matthew Yglesias writes in his Moneybox column. “And that's too many.” — Why is that? According to Yglesias, it's because small banks are poorly managed, unregulated, and can't compete.

Discussion: Gawker and Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion

Sally Kohn / The Daily Beast:

When Religion and Liberty Collide — How right-wing conservatives are using the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case on contraception to force their religious views on the nation. — “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...”

Discussion: NewsBusters

New York Times:

Detroit Ruling on Bankruptcy Lifts Pension Protections — DETROIT — In a ruling that could reverberate far beyond Detroit, a federal judge held on Tuesday that this battered city could formally enter bankruptcy and asserted that Detroit's obligation to pay pensions in full was not untouchable.

Discussion: detroitnews.com, Guardian, Outside the Beltway, Taegan Goddard's … and DealBook

Washington Post:

Heavy traffic on HealthCare.gov after fixes; users report mixed results on insurance site — Ihab Issa lost track of how often he has tried to buy insurance through HealthCare.gov, although he knows it is probably more than 100 times. — Issa, 48, who works in a psychotherapy office …