“This idea that we’re suddenly going to establish litmus tests and all across the country we’re going to purge the party of anybody who doesn’t agree with us 100 percent; that guarantees Obama’s reelection, that guarantees Pelosi as Speaker-for-life.” — Newt Gingrich, defending his decision to back GOP candidate Dede Scozzafava in the NY-23 special election this year....

Courtesy of Andrew Sullivan. At the very least, that chart illustrates the trajectory of this individual’s journey through the swamp of the health care debate. That chart might also explain “the answer.” No need to add to more information if confusion already reins.

Congress has passed and the President will sign a new hate crimes law named after Matthew Shepard. The law would broaden current laws to include attacks based on a victim’s sexual orientation, gender identity or mental or physical disability. Current laws already allow federal jurisdiction over crimes based on race, color, religion or national origin. The bill would also lift a requirement that a victim...

Note: I originally published this post about 6 months ago and hoped that perhaps as time passed it would become outdated. I don’t mean to suggest that anyone in the GOP or conservative movement leadership was going to listen to lil ol me, but that perhaps they’d change their minds after failures. With a decent chance for the GOP to lose two key races in NY and NJ next week I thought it was worth...

The Samaritans were a despised and denigrated tribal group in ancient times. Yet, who was it who had the eyes to see, the heart to act when all others avoided the battered and ran away? It was a Samaritan. As the ancient story is told… a poor soul lay by the side of the road, beaten to a bloody pulp. Men of the priestly classes crossed to the other side of the road to avoid helping the bleeding man....

John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Democrats and the Administration are test-flying all sorts of behind the scenes tax increases to pay for healthcare reforms. Or else they claim that proposed Medicare savings will pay for expanding coverage to uninsured people and increasing patient rights on existing health insurance policies. After 30 years of bipartisan tax cuts and bipartisan spending increases, I don’t take either party seriously with...

That is part of a very interesting conversation that TPM’s Brian Beutler had with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY):

And now the key question is emerging — so get ready to hear it often in coming days: does Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid have the votes to pass the opt-out public option in the health reform care battle? Or does his announcement portend an ugly mega-partisan battle that could end with the passage of something less with national partisan polarization lines more starkly drawn than ever? Is it a trap...

I really didn’t think the old geezer had it in him:

It was a busy weekend and I’d like to give people at the Moderate Voice a heads up on some of what we’ve been covering. From Pakistan’s The Nation Newspaper, the editorial headlined Hillary Clinton Should Mind Her Own Media! attacks the secretary of state for criticizing Pakistan’s media coverage of the huge U.S. aid bill to that nation. Then for Pakistan’s Pak Tribune in an...

Texas, the Eyes of Justice Are Upon You by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship On October 13, we lost a resolute champion of the law, a man who left his impact on the lives of untold numbers of Americans. His very name made his life’s work almost inevitable, a matter of destiny. William Wayne Justice was a Federal judge for the Eastern District of Texas. That’s right, he was “Justice Justice.”...

Q: Mr. President, do you prefer the “trigger” or “opt out” approaches to the public option? A: Yes.

Has Malaysia gone Islamic? Maznah Mohamad, visiting senior research fellow at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore, looks at the issue on RealClearWorld. Here’s how he begins his piece: In Malaysia’s current political climate, it is no longer possible to distinguish Islamic radicals from Islamic moderates. Despite official boasting about the country’s diverse...

This stems from a discussion I was having with a friend of mine. Obviously the ideal concept is for all people to live in free and democratic societies. But we have enough trouble managing one here, where we’ve had centuries of democratic concepts both in the US and in the UK. Even there it took centuries of effort to transition from the absolute monarchy system to various forms of representative government. But...

Are the nation’s fiscal, economic, military, political and social challenges setting us up for a Military Coup? Will the U.S. Military Industrial Complex, acting through our Joint Chiefs of Staff or some other high-level corps of U.S. Military officers, and supported by a variety of angry business leaders and extreme conservatives be so resentful of any changes to our national priorities that they would encourage...

BOSTON — Mayor Tom Menino looks around the elevator and reaches instinctively for the hand of the only person in the car he’s never met. “Where are you from?” he asks the young man. “Somerville,” the young man replies. The mayor almost recoils. “Somerville!” he exclaims with a dismissive wave — there are no votes for him in Somerville —...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — who has made noises about running for President before but did not go ahead with it — sounds as if he really intends to throw his hat (and presumably his prolific Twitter feed) into the 2012 Presidential nomination race. The Politics Daily caught this latest delicious political item — a comment Gingrich made on CSPAN: Callista and I are going to think...

The public option is dead. Long live the public option. That’s the situation now prevailing on a key sticking point in health care reform. GOPers hate the public option because they say it would symbolize the Obama administration’s encroachment into the private sector and be a huge step into socialized medicine. Democrats are split, with some progressives nearly making support of the public option...

Just talking myself through the news of the day. Again. the way one does in a trauma/ triage situ. Most minds dont follow a straight path when learning the news. They veer into old memories. They look for patterns. They try to understand, so they can see, what can be done to help. Today, I’m saying to myself… Don’t go numb like it’s the farm report, pork bellies up, oats and soy down. Don’t...

As we noted two weeks ago, there has been considerable speculation that CNN’s Lou Dobbs is seeking to jump ship to Fox Business News — speculation that increased after he met with Fox News chief Roger Ailes. The latest development: Not if Fox’s Geraldo Rivera has anything to do about it. Geraldo even reportedly called Ailes who he says assured him it ain’t gonna happen (which does not...

Mike Keefe, The Denver Post This cartoon is copyrighted and authorized to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

A Saudi Arabian court sentenced a female journalist to 60 lashes because she worked for a television station that aired the sexual confessions of a Saudi man, she and her attorney said today. The Reuters news agency said the woman, who requested only her first name used, was unaware her Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. did not have proper authorization to operate in the Islamic kingdom. “The verdict was just...

Campaign attacks on Barack Obama and his crew as latte-drinking elitists are finally coming into play in their war of words with Rupert Murdoch’s rough-and-ready outback minions. Any country boy could have told them a basic rule of rural life: Never get into a contest with a skunk. Now, the Administration is finding itself befouled by controversy as an ABC correspondent asks at a briefing why “one...

Bill Schorr, Cagle Cartoons This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.