It’s an age-old question: If elected (or appointed) to public office, is it your primary duty to vote your conscience, or vote the conscience of a majority of your constituents, even if the latter runs counter to the former? Framed another way: If you are convinced a certain vote is the right vote, will you cast that vote, even if it means you might be voted out of office at the electorate’s next opportunity to judge you? For one senator, on one issue, the answer is clear. And even...

The NYT published today a fascinating (and somewhat frustrating) look at health care reform’s supporters and detractors in Congress, by FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver and two co-authors. Their thesis: Critics of the health care reform plan often refer to it derisively as “ObamaCare.” On the policy merits, this is highly questionable: the White House has taken a hands-off approach toward the legislation that recently passed in the House and the Senate version that Harry Reid unveiled...

From Politico: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health reform bill comes in at $849 billion, and will reduce the federal budget deficit by $127 billion in the first 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office says, according to a senior Democratic aide. More here. I wonder if that’s enough to perusade the Senate 3.

Per a WSJ.com report (registration/subscription may be required) … “We have attacked a ship with an American flag — we tried to throw our ladders for climbing (but) it sped and (has) gone away,” said Abdullahi Nor, who identified himself as a pirate spokesman. So if pirates hire spokespeople, are they really pirates? Maybe I’m stuck in Hollywood/Johnny-Depp mode, but I honestly thought part of the pirate mystique was a flagrant rejection of this level of sophistication....

I’m a day or more late to this meme and many others have already chimed in. So be it. I’ll now add my voice to those who have risen to the defense of the Senate 3 — Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) — who are “proving tough sells” on health care reform. Importantly, I rise to the defense of the Senate 3 as someone who would actually like to see reform enacted; as someone who believes the 80/20 rule ought to be applied...

It’s an indisputable statement, but not exactly one destined to build taxpayer confidence in their government. Responding to an ABC News investigation into stimulus data being reported for non-existent Congressional districts, the Recovery Board’s Communications Director, Ed Pound, is quoted as saying: We report what the recipients submit to us … Some recipients clearly don’t know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number....

These are nothing more than placeholders, based on nothing more than a random reading of the tea leaves this morning. Obviously, a lot could happen in the next one to five years, and these predictions could easily prove to be very, very wrong. But what the hell. 1. Concerned independents and a re-motivated base will hand Republicans control of the House of Representatives in 2010, but not the Senate. 2. A recovered economy and not-worse (potentially improved) foreign policy outlook will combine...

That’s the word: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and four other men accused in the plot will be prosecuted in federal court in New York City, the United States attorney general announced Friday. I couldn’t be more neutral on this subject — though I’m apparently one of the few. By now, the screaming is at full volume: From the hyperventaliting hysteria on the right — to the “it’s about damn...

David Brooks scans the horizon for a potentially winning GOP presidential candiate in 2012 or 2016. In the process, he discovers Sen. John Thune (SD). The money lines, in my opinion, are these … [Thune] is a gracious and ecumenical legislator, not a combative one. And … The first person who told me I had to write a column about Thune was a liberal Democratic senator who really likes the guy. In these respects, Sen. Thune seems to stand in stark contrast to many of his peers, whom...

And now for some amusing inside-the-Beltway gossip: A debate between Time’s Joe Klein and New Republic’s Jamie Kirchick spilled off the dais Tuesday into a hallway confrontation where Klein called the younger pundit a “dishonest [expletive]” and “[expletiving] propagandist.” Leaning left, Klein was raised on the old media but is adjusting to the new. Leaning right, Kirchick was raised on the new media, but enjoys the imprimatur of the old. Recognizing all that,...

That’s precisely what I did in my latest guest commentary for St. Louis Public Radio, aired yesterday. This missive was originally prompted by my disgust with the recent, seemingly endless flood of anti-stem-cell initiatives in Missouri. Granted, those initiatives — manifestations of direct-democracy that I oppose — are only attempting to overturn an earlier direct-democracy initiative that I supported. I’m thus willing to concede that, had the original initative not been...

From page three of today’s WaPo article on Dede Scozzafava: “There is a great song called ‘Coca Cola Cowboy’ and I believe that’s what we have here. She was a Republican as long as it enhanced her electability,” said [former House majority leader] Armey, reached while petting a goat at his Texas ranch. Actually, that’s not the entire paragraph; it ends with the remainder of Armey’s quote, which does nothing to modify the oddity of the preceding words....

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on compromise in the health care legislative process: I’m sure there are a lot of people sitting in the shade at the Aspen Institute — my brother being one of them — who will tell you what the ideal plan is. Great, fascinating. You have the art of the possible measured against the ideal. H/t Eric Zimmermann.

Love her or not — and I’m in the “not” category, most of the time — Speaker Pelosi’s legislative maneuvering on the House health care bill was impressive. See the second item at First Read, h/t Ben Smith.

Chris Cillizza suggests the answer is somewhere around a half century, as illustrated by a timeline map of presidential and congressional elections, 1960-2008, put together by Cillizza’s WaPo colleagues. Of their work, he writes: Need a shocker? Compare the map that elected Jimmy Carter president in 1976 — a solidly Democratic south counterbalanced by a solidly Republican west coast — and the one that elected Barack Obama in 2008 — the northeast and west coast for Obama,...

The massacre at Ft. Hood. A pipeline explosion in the Texas Panhandle. A grain processing plant explosion in western Missouri. What the hell? I’m certainly not suggeting these events are related; nor am I suggesting the explosions are comparable to what happened at Ft. Hood — not at all. It just seemed to be a disproportionate morning of bad news, and from such disparate places. UPDATE: And now this.

The money line from Mr. Brooks’ column today: Independents are herds of cats who find out what they think through a meandering process of discovery. While that’s probably not fair to say about all independent voters, it’s a shockingly accurate description of the independent voter writing this post. Of course, despite my decision to headline the “meandering cats” part of Brooks’ column, his primary argument is not about meandering. It’s about how independents...

Eric Zimmermann reports that Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is distancing himself from the Feds’ stimulus plan: “I didn’t endorse it.” Um … I think you did.

Earlier, Joe linked to RNC Chair Michael Steele’s ominous warning to GOP Members of Congress who might be thinking about “going rogue” against the party line. Meanwhile, in Palm Beach, Fla., the County Democratic Party organization has practiced its own brand of purging someone who bucks the preferred party line. Granted, the latter case hardly compares to the former, although it starts to resemble a trend when it’s combined with a Democratic punditry that seems to be actively...

“When our party is united, whether you run in a Northern state or a Southern state, our party can win,” said the House Republican whip, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia. “But when you are divided, you can lose a seat that has been in the Republican column for quite a long time.” The Virginia GOP, at least, seems to have gotten the message.

This morning, I don’t entirely understand the crowing and chest-beating from ultra-conservatives, nor the smattering of headlines re: a “wake-up call” for, or “warning” to, Democrats. Sure, governors might comment on federal policy, and they might some day run for federal office. But while governors are governors, they don’t cast votes in the Chambers of Congress on a President’s agenda. What’s more, Virginia’s history suggests that the “fluke”...

Joe already touched on tonight’s HBO documentary. Two other Obama-related items today add some context. The first is Jeff Zeleny’s report for the NYT re: Iowa voter attitudes a year after the election. The second is a Daily Beast exclusive excerpt from David Plouffe’s memoir. The NYT article cites, among others, John Sager a “retired electrical engineer who became a Democrat to support Mr. Obama.” Sager “believes that the president too often blames others...

Via Ezra Klein. At the end of his post, note the link to the full package of charts. The last chart in that package, in particular — see below — caught my eye, begging many questions. Bruce McQuain chimes in. H/t casualobserver.

A fascinating post from a consistently solid writer and thinker. His third point is key. (Apologies if one of my colleagues has already pointed to this post. There has been so much written on this subject that I have not been able to read it all, including what has been written here.)

Per Politico: Republican Dede Scozzafava has dropped out of next Tuesday’s NY 23 special election. She did not endorse either of her two opponents, Conservative party candidate Doug Hoffman or Democrat Bill Owens. Scozzafava’s statement here. I think she made the wrong decision, but the statement is pure class. Before this development, the race was neck-and-neck between Hoffman and Owens, polling at approximately 35 percent each. With Scozzafava’s 20 percent now up for grabs,...