There is no principle here at all — just blind partisanship and the urge to destroy.

WASHINGTON — One of the tragedies of the viciously politicized battle over health care reform is the defection of the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops from a cause they have championed for decades. Indifferent to political fashions, the bishops were the strongest voices in support of universal health coverage, a position rooted in Catholic social thought that calls for a special solicitude toward...

Fox News’ Bret Baier spent much of a rare one-on-one interview with Pres. Obama not letting him answer the questions he asked.

Earmarks — those endearing Congressional plums that brought us “The Bridge To No Where” — sort of slipped under the radar of the recent news cycles out of Washington this past week. Democratic House members have pledged to not submit earmarks for for-profit projects. Republicans have one-upped that by pledging a ban on all earmarks for a year. Earmarks are the fast track for a Congressman...

As Congress gears up for a big vote on health care reform, it’s worth considering how vagrants’ health problems could affect municipal budgets.

Republicans in Congress have just a few more days to kill health care reform, and boy are they putting that time to good use. Tea Party activists who came to D.C. on Tuesday to demonstrate at the Capitol were greeted by Rep. Steve King of Iowa, and Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas:

Andy McCarthy, who has yet to meet a torture technique he doesn’t love, has a long, long, looonnng article at NRO bemoaning the “Slaughter of the Constitution” (it’s a pun — get it?) via the constitutional travesty known as “deem and pass” (or the self-executing rule — which, come to think of it, sounds like a torture technique Andy should know about, if he doesn’t...

If you have the patience to get through the set-up, which takes up half of this extraordinarily foolish column, you will reach Brooks’ point — he is concerned that using reconciliation to pass health care reform destroys the “spirit of sympathy” and the “person-to-person relationships” that make the Senate so much more “humane” than the House:

This is slightly different from the procedure that was nixed by the Senate Parliamentarian. Like much of the Senate rule book, it’s hard to wrap your brain around because it’s just so convoluted and arcane — but as Ezra Klein explains, it’s legit:

Give Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, credit. If anyone knows where the skeletons are buried in the financial institutions, he does. Remember last year he was one of two senators and a gaggle of other VIPs who received sweetheart loans from Countrywide Financial in an obscure program that waived points, lender fees and company borrowing rules. Just last week Dodd, chairman of the Banking Committee, booted the...

The next time you hear a politician rail about Social Security and Medicare going broke, you have my permission to throw your shoe at him/her/it. Since the Reagan administration, both parties in power have robbed the entitlement program trust funds as a kid breaking his piggy bank and paying it back in worthless IOUs. Folks, that’s not much of a stretch. Here’s why. If the commissioners who run the...

Ask the Chamber of Commerce: Why Is Too Much Not Enough? by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship Living in these United States, there comes a point at which you throw your hands up in exasperation and despair and ask a fundamental question or two: how much excess profit does corporate America really need? How much bigger do executive salaries and bonuses have to be, how many houses or jets or artworks can be crammed...

Republicans have been throwing down the gauntlet to the White House and Democrats, arguing that if health care reform is passed they’ll use it against the Democrats in 2010. And now some White House officials have their response: we dare you to do just that — and welcome it: Expressing an increasing confidence that a massive health care overhaul will pass Congress — despite dire warnings from...

America’s Security Put in Peril by Failing Schools by Michael Reagan Today, Washington is so focused on expanding the size and influence of our federal government at the expense of taxpayers that they are overlooking one of the greatest security risks facing our nation — our failing education system. Our broken education system is failing America’s children while countries around the world, our own...

Matthew Yglesias has a superb piece today responding to the “tea leaves” crowd who predict electoral disaster for the Democrats if health care reform becomes law:

They are:

Here is The New Republic‘s Jonathan Cohn on some of the reports that have been flying around the Internet concerning health care reform:

On Yahoo there is the headline “Feb. retail-sales report provides hope for economic recovery.” From the article: Retail sales posted a surprising increase in February as consumers did not let major snowstorms stop them from racking up purchases. The advance, the biggest since November, provided hope that the recovery from the Great Recession is gaining momentum… For February, sales rose 0.3...

Let me just say this straight out: This could not happen, and it would not happen, in a country that actually was the greatest country on earth.

Yves Smith calls for his resignation. I have little to add other than that Bill Black, a leading regulator in resolving the S&L crisis has long claimed that the financial crisis was not merely a result of bad decisions, but in large part due to overt fraud that was perpetuated by the largest financial institutions and blessed (or at least given a blind eye) by the government. If this turns into anything,...