Sen. Tom Harkin: “We will have a bill on the president’s desk before Christmas, a health-reform bill. It will have a lot of good stuff in it. It will have a lot of prevention and wellness programs in there that I’ve been fighting for. And it will have a public option… The question of if it doesn’t isn’t even an option.” Plus, Republicans won’t be involved in putting a bill together: “This will be a proposal by the Democrats to bring a bill on...

Yesterday, I posted on the truth about Roman Polanski, and this was my conclusion: Whatever you think of the cinema and celebrity of Roman Polanski, it is the truth that should matter most, including the truth about what happened over three decades ago. What is that truth? That he drugged and raped a minor, a 13-year old girl (read the sordid details here). That is disturbing — and criminal — but what is also disturbing is how so many in Hollywood have rushed to his defence since his...

As you may know, famed Polish-French director Roman Polanski was recently arrested in Switzerland. In 1977, he was convicted in the U.S. of “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor” (a disturbing euphemism). He has been on the run ever since, avoiding extradition in Europe while continuing with his career. Polanski has many fans and admirers, of course. I especially like Chinatown and The Pianist, though I generally find him grossly overrated. (Knife in the Water, his early “masterpiece,”...

William Safire — Nixon speechwriter, New York Times columnist, and conservative intellectual — has died at the age of 79. I’ll admit, I never much cared for him — or, rather, for his work: Unlike most Washington columnists who offer judgments with Olympian detachment, Mr. Safire was a pugnacious contrarian who did much of his own reporting, called people liars in print and laced his opinions with outrageous wordplay. Critics initially dismissed him as an apologist for the...

Four years ago, I wrote a six-part series at The Reaction — “Democracy in Deutschland” — on the German federal election. It was a fascinating election and a fascinating time in German politics, culminating in the creation of a so-called “Grand Coalition” between Angela Merkel’s center-right CDU (along with its Bavarian sister party, the right-wing CSU) and the incumbent center-left SPD, with Merkel the new chancellor. Surprisingly, perhaps, the coalition...

With McChrystal et al. pushing for a significant troop increase — an irresponsible one, in my view, given that it’s not clear anymore what the purpose of the war is — this comes as something of a pleasant development: President Obama is exploring alternatives to a major troop increase in Afghanistan, including a plan advocated by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to scale back American forces and focus more on rooting out Al Qaeda there and in Pakistan, officials said Tuesday. The...

According to Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), if you’re sick (even seriously sick, like with cancer) and don’t have insurance, you should either look for “an existing government program” or beg for charity. This is what passes for Republican “compassion” these days. You’re sick? Tough luck. ********** “No one in this country, given who we are, should be sitting without an option to be addressed,” he added. Yes, but existing government programs and “charitable...

Greenwald: Advocates of escalation in Afghanistan chose Bob Woodward to “reprise his role as warmonger hagiographer” by publishing Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s “confidential” memo to the President arguing for increased troops. As Digby notes, the vague case for continuing to occupy that country is virtually identical to every instance where America’s war-loving Foreign Policy Community advocates the need for new and continued wars. It’s nothing more than America’s...

I think it’s quite hilarious that Michael Barone, never a stranger to hyperbole, claims that liberals are anti-dissent: It is an interesting phenomenon that the response of the left half of our political spectrum to criticism and argument is often to try to shut it down. It’s also hilarious that he writes this without a trace of irony. It is true, of course, that the Democratic Party seeks loyalty. What political party doesn’t? Even here, though, it is nothing like the Republican...

Over at TPM, Brian Beutler has an excellent post up on why Democrats likely won’t use the reconciliation process to pass health-care reform with a simple majority in the Senate. Aside from the fact that the process could actually result in a less-than-desirable bill, given that non-budgetary matters could be thrown out by the parliamentarian (with Republicans pushing to have as much thrown out as possible), according to reconciliation skeptics, “there probably aren’t 51 votes in...

Can you blame President Obama for “snubbing” Fox News yesterday? Steve Benen: “Fox News spent months promoting last weekend’s right-wing protests in Washington, encouraging viewers to go register their outrage. And during the event itself, the Republican news network went a step further, encouraging the crowd to get louder once the cameras were on.” (HuffPo has more.) This is a network that wants Obama to fail, that wants health-care reform to fail, and that is actively...

Irving Kristol, father of Bill and one of the founders of neoconservatism, died on Friday at the age of 89. You can find obituaries, among other places, at the Times and the Post, as well as from Robert Kagan (a close friend of Bill and a leading neocon) and John Podhoretz (son of Norman, another founding neocon, at Commentary, one of the key neocon publications). I usually find myself in opposition to neoconservatism, and hence I usually found myself in opposition to almost everything Kristol stood...

From Sunday’s op-ed: In the meantime, a certain damage has been done — to Obama and to the country. The inmates took over the asylum, trivializing and poisoning the national discourse while the president bided his time. The lies that Obama called out so strongly in his speech — from “death panels” to “government takeover” — ran amok. So did all the other incendiary faux controversies, culminating with the ludicrous outcry over the prospect that the president...

That’s right, what’s the point of Sen. Max Baucus’s health-care reform proposal? Is it to win bipartisan support? Yes, probably, given that Baucus all along has been trying to work with the few Republicans who have shown a slight (if hollow) interest in reform — namely, the GOP members of the Gang of Six. Not surprisingly, though, the Republicans in question, notably Sens. Charles Grassley and Mike Enzi, have already come out against Baucus’s proposal. And it’s...

It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear, but it was close… close enough, I suppose. Alas, President Obama left open the possibility that his preferred public option — which, in my view, should be non-negotiable (see also Krugman on this) — could be replaced with some other alternative to private insurance, such as a non-profit co-op system or a “trigger” (which would kick in a public option were insurance companies unable or unwilling to provide adequate coverage),...

The truth is that he has no interest in reform. In fact, for all his Gang of Six efforts, he’s pretty much against it. I delved into Republican opposition to reform, including Grassley’s, yesterday. Here is Grassley himself, who has been emphasizing his opposition to reform in his recent fundraising efforts, speaking on a conference call with Iowa reporters: There’s a feeling that the only way to get a bipartisan agreement is to defeat a Democratic proposal on the first hand and...

I tweeted on this last night, but I thought I’d link here to the NYT story: Seven months after taking office, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is reshaping the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division by pushing it back into some of the most important areas of American political life, including voting rights, housing, employment, bank lending practices and redistricting after the 2010 census. As part of this shift, the Obama administration is planning a major revival of high-impact civil...

It’s often edifying when Republicans show their true colors, even if they’re not exactly “beautiful like a rainbow.” On health-care reform specifically, Republicans on Capitol Hill have for the most part either been obstructionists or outright opponents, spinning about “socialism” and “death panels” with all the strength they could muster, much of it latching on with an irresponsible media establishment that emphasizes not the facts, not the truth,...

Well, the Republicans are to blame, of course. But, for Democrats, here’s some much-needed perspective from TNR’s Jon Chait: The Senate is what controls the process. That’s the chokepoint for any health care bill. The question isn’t how badly Obama wants a public plan, or how much he cares about bipartisanship. It’s whether moderate to conservative Democrats in the Senate will filibuster a bill that has a public plan or lacks GOP support. Everything else is details. In...

Guest post by Frankie Sturm Frankie Sturm is communications director at the Truman National Security Project and a freelance journalist. Ed. note: As part of our ongoing relationship with the Truman National Security Project, I’m pleased to announce that we’ll be cross-posting some pieces from Operation FREE, a new initiative that seeks to raise awareness about the links between climate change, energy, and national security — an extemely worthwhile endeavour, to be sure. Operation...