Two polls have suggested that Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman is in the lead in the race for the 23rd Congressional District in the State of New York. The first poll released yesterday, comes out this way: Hoffman with 31.3%, Democrat Bill Owens with 27.0%, and Republican Dede Scozzafava with 19.7%. Twenty-two percent are undecided. The second poll released today has Hoffman again in the lead with...

Amid the torrent of news, one might have missed one of the largest drug busts in history just days ago – against La Familia – Mexico’s most deadly narco-trafficking mafia group. Confiscated by over 3,000 agents from emergency and security services in 19 states were 1,100 pounds of marijuana, 770 pounds of methamphetamine, 138 pounds of cocaine, $3.4 million, 144 weapons of various calibers,...

Matthew Yglesias has some interesting thoughts on conflicting values for progressives in the Israel-Palestinian conflict:

Michael Goldfarb is not interested in constructive criticism of J Street. What Mike wants is to expose J Street as a fringe, left-wing activist group that only pretends to be pro-Israel to advance it’s relativist agenda. So call Mike partisan, but don’t forget that partisan critics often make substantive points, regardless of their intentions. And Mike is both very sharp and very entertaining,...

This is what Democrats in Congress get for allowing Lieberman to keep his prestigi0us committee chair assignment.

Per a breaking news email from Politico: Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) says he will join a Republican filibuster against the Senate Democrats’ health care reform bill unless the public option is removed. More here. From CNN: Also Tuesday, conservative Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska warned that his vote remains uncertain for a bill with a public option. From the same story: [GOP Sen.] Snowe has...

Aislin, The Montreal Gazette This cartoon is copyrighted and authorized to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

As Congress stumbles toward a final deal, the process is a reminder of the disheartening political climate in which we live today. No one will really be happy with the final result. How could they be? In a world where human considerations are swamped by partisan posturing, the bottom line, if anyone can figure out what it is, will not be how much better or worse it makes our society but who wins and who loses....

“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 —...