As we have been seeing for months, when it comes to provisioning the population with health care, the behavior of U.S. Republicans is far more incomprehensible to Europeans than even for most U.S. Democrats. According to columnist David Francis of Germany’s Financial Times Deutschland, President Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress on health care came close to sealing the deal while exposing...

Mike Keefe, The Denver Post This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

“You’re either with us or against us,” I may be paraphrasing the former President of the United States, but these very words might as well be the mantra of the Republican Party right now. I now watch the American political discourse with a sense of sadness and dismay as in a few short months the political discussion in the US could be fairly compared to an argument between two young children fighting over...

John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to appear on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

In an official White House announcement yesterday, the President of the United States proclaimed September 11, 2009, as Patriot Day and National Day of Service and Remembrance in honor of the individuals who lost their lives as a result of the terrorist attacks against the United States that occurred on September 11, 2001, and invited the Governors of the United States and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and...

Update below: Yes, Nancy Pelosi had shelved that option. But it seems that she, and other Democrats, are reconsidering. Behind the scenes, Democrats have been pressuring Wilson to apologize on the House floor, which so far he has refused to do — and his openly unrepentant behavior in the last 24 hours isn’t helping.

Andrew Sullivan: [Alan Turing] was one of the greatest minds of modern time, a founding father of computer science, and his legendary breaking of the Enigma Code may have been a tipping point in the struggle against Nazism. Few men have contributed so much to human learning or to his country’s survival. But Turing was persecuted into suicide by the homophobia of his time and barred from entering the US...

Has America’s reaction to September 11 – its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq – accelerated the end of U.S. dominance of the international system? According to commentator He Liangliang of Hong Kong’s Phoenix TV – one of the few privately-owned cable operators permitted by Beijing authorities to broadcast to the Mainland – America’s days as a global cop are well and...

Five years after that horrific day in September 2001, the following letter appeared in TIME: Five years after 9/11, our nation ought to be as united as it was on that tragic day. We should have held on to the outpouring of global goodwill and support we received then. We should have remained laser-focused on rooting out and bringing to justice those responsible for the attacks. We should have remained committed...

Our political Quote of the Day comes from the Washington Post’s prize-winning columnist Eugene Robinson, writing about the Republican civility breakdown that he and several pundits say was visible on several levels during President Barack Obama’s speech to Congress on health care reform: House Republicans were particularly ostentatious in showing their disrespect not just for Obama but for the office...

After reading David Brooks’ column this morning, I had the same reaction Dave Schuler had: I agree with this Brooks column probably more than any other of his. And the line from Brooks’ column that most captured my attention was this one: [Obama] has opened up many opportunities for intelligent Republicans and moderate Democrats to constructively offer amendments to improve the bill and bring it...

Riber Hansson, Sweden This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to appear on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

I posted this last year but it is worth posting again. Via the Washington Post’s On Faith: Lamentations: 9/11 I live in New York City. Two friends, including someone at whose wedding I had recently been the rabbi died in the World Trade Center. The acrid smell came through my apartment windows for days and sacred ashes, which I wiped away with tears, fell on my window sills for weeks. My children who...

Isaac T. Wood and Larry J. Sabato: RED DAWN: GOP REVIVAL FOR 2010 HOUSE? Republicans will pick up substantially, but fall short of full control While the next slate of House elections does not occur until 2010, congressmen and their challengers certainly don’t take off the “off-year.” Instead, this year is a crucial one for the parties who must prove their recruiting chops, for the incumbents...

Joe G. noted earlier that Joe Wilson scored very poorly on Politifact’s Truth-o-meter. Since that post, there have been five more targeting Rep. Wilson, including Kathy’s moderately titled, Is there a politician lower than Joe Wilson? I’m guessing Kathy has heard of Charlie Rangel. Anyhow, I’m not here to defend Joe Wilson, who most people never heard of until yesterday. I’m here...

Those talk show hosts are awful. They say the most awful things. But it’s the President who runs the country, so I’m much more concerned with his disingenuity. From last night: Instead of honest debate, we’ve seen scare tactics. Also last night: Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close....

Yeah. His name is Joe Wilson. This is not the Joe Wilson who apologized to Pres. Obama last night for screaming, “You lie! Lies!” in the middle of the President’s speech to a joint session of Congress. This is the Joe Wilson who, the day after the speech (that would be today), made a YouTube video using his (in his words) “inappropriate” behavior to ask for money and continue telling...

The editors of the New Republic have some harsh words[subscription only] for House Democrats, who toppled a GOP majority in 2006 by promising to clean up Washington. Charlie Rangel and John Murtha, two of the most senior and powerful Democrats in the House, are an embarrassment. Late August brought the stunning revelation that Rangel failed to note two bank accounts, each containing somewhere in the range of...

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

At FiveThirtyEight.com, separate comments by Nate Silver and Tom Schaller — Nate first:

And so it begins: an attempt to obscure and downplay something that happened — something that Republican party elders clearly did not want to happen and moved quickly to get the person involved to rectify. Rep. Joe Wilson yelled out “You lie” during Barack Obama’s speech to Congress and that was the issue last night. But now, via the Drudge Report and other new and old media pundits,...

And some visit his office to congratulate him for calling breaking traditional and shouting out and calling a President delivering an address to a joint session of Congress a liar.

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...

Where is the public place for loss of personal control? Where is the place for ‘fight club?’ The gridiron, the clay court, the roped ring, and other similar, are where that all belongs… there are many many venues for men (and women and children) who ‘cant bear the burden’ one moment longer, to vent their particular pique or outrage. Long ago I knew Chained Lightning Johnson,...

Guest post by Frankie Sturm Frankie Sturm is communications director at the Truman National Security Project and a free-lance journalist. The debate over climate change and energy legislation is becoming a debate over America’s national security. And this is just where the debate belongs. As nearly 150 veterans gear up to visit Washington to ask their senators to take serious action on climate change,...