Adele Stan at AlterNet unpacks Glenn Beck’s keynote speech at CPAC. Via Heather at Crooks and Liars and Digby at Hullabaloo. Complete video set at YouTube.

Democrats are rediscovering the old saying, “just as well to be hung for a sheep as a lamb,” as they edge toward passing health care by a simple majority in the face of Republican roadblocks that have aroused public outrage. “I’ve had many conversations this week with the president, his chief of staff, and Speaker Pelosi,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Friday. “And...

Obama’s Healthcare Summit Scam by Floyd and Mary Beth Brown “The proposal to televise a February 25 health-care summit with Republicans grew out of a conclusion by top White House advisers that Obama had bested House GOP leaders during a 90-minute televised discussion in Baltimore last month,” according to the Washington Post. We thought ObamaCare was pronounced dead with the election of Scott Brown, so...

Don’t tell anyone I’m saying nice things about the MSM. But here goes. Kevin Drum says he can’t recall the media ever giving “any kind of serious treatment” to the question of whether patients should be allowed to be health insurance across state lines (which Republicans think is a good thing and Kevin thinks is a very bad thing). Kevin quotes Bob Somerby, who says the media...

Harry Reid is now saying that health care reform will be passed by April, using reconciliation:

In researching data as fodder for a column touting the much ballyhooed televised summit on health care legislation next Thursday between President Obama and members of both parties in the House and Senate, I was dumbstruck by urban legends that usually get in the way of a good story. It involves cost containment. For-profit insurance carriers apply a model using premiums, share-of-costs and caps to balance income...

Can you find the missing word in the Republican Party’s new manifesto “recommit[ing] ourselves to the ideas of the American Founding“?

Oh those wild and crazy conservatives: Attendees at a conservative conference in town [D.C.] this week will have the opportunity to whack a pinata of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Conservative Political Action Conference “CPAC” begins Thursday here in D.C. and will feature a party Friday evening where guests will have the opportunity to whack a Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) piñata. On the other...

As news about the Haiti earthquake tragedy is relegated to the inside pages of our newspapers, the suffering continues. But so do the humanitarian and reconstruction efforts. Our troops who were among the first to reach the victims and to provide search and rescue—then, recovery—are still there, albeit in fewer numbers. As the number of U.S. military in and around Haiti decreases, so have the...

James Fallows writes that the differences between Evan Bayh and his more liberal dad are as much about character as they are about political philosophy:

Richard Norton Smith is a distinguished presidential historian and former head of six presidential libraries. He has published numerous books and articles on our presidents and is a nationally recognized expert on “most anything and everything related to the presidency.” His books include “An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover” (1984), “The Harvard Century: The Making of a University to a...

Here is a non-graded, not-for-credit civics question: What does it mean when the House Minority Leader demands that the White House post any new health care proposal online 72 hours before the Health Care Summit on February 25, and then attacks the White House when it does exactly that?

I’m just an average person who turns the air conditioning on when its hot and the furnace on when its cold. When it comes to global warming, I figure the pollutants we emit into the air probably contributes to the trend in some degree. That’s an unshakable belief just as evolution makes more sense than the creationist theory. Now, what empirical knowledge I have on climate change you can stuff in...

Today, Valentine’s Day, marks the beginning of my fourth year writing for The Moderate Voice… as a journo, yes, as much so as a lover… a lover of The Bright Arts– a phrase I made up in my mind– to tell about my love of tatts as art, of running horses, of wild weather, of raptors, of water unpinned down by dams, of brave human beings who have little or nothing, but carry the gold...

David Herszenhorn reports in the New York Times‘s Prescriptions column that Republican leaders in the House have sent a letter addressed to Sen. Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi informing them that the only “compromise” they will accept at the health care summit is no health care reform bill:

When you’re a book author, a journalist, or a person who writes occasionally, who ‘goes out to see what you can see….’ we’re gifted to often meet completely odd souls… who out-eccentric even us. Sometimes, you’re lucky to make friends of strangers. I’ve one such friend I met in an odd way. Since then, he sends me letters and poems every day. I wanted you to see...

WASHINGTON — So what exactly is the Tea Party movement and why has it risen up? The ferocity of its opposition to President Obama is mystifying to political progressives. Most of the left simply doesn’t see the current occupant of the White House as especially liberal, let alone “socialist.” Obama, after all, is the man who saved the banks and the capital markets. Now the...

Lobbyists Retreat but Never Surrender by Michael Winship With George Washington’s birthday comes the attendant mythology, hatchet and cherry tree, wooden teeth, throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac River – or the Rappahannock. Of course, as the old joke goes, a dollar went a lot further then. Today, if you tried to hurl a silver dollar across the Potomac, chances are some member...

Now here is something I cannot in a million years imagine a Republican administration doing. Anthem Blue Cross of California just announced that it’s jacking up its premiums by as much as 39% — despite a year of enormous profits — and Kathleen Sibelius hit the roof:

In a pre-Super Bowl interview, President Obama told Katie Couric about a televised bipartisan health-care meeting on February 25th to go through “all the best ideas…and move it forward.” If he hadn’t been absorbed in the game, watching Bill Moyers Journal would have given him a more productive idea than meeting with members of Congress who have been bargaining and bastardizing reform into...