While Rahm has been loudly flailing in his attempts to push through health care, Henry Waxman has been preparing for battle.

Whew, it’s sure lucky for us Willard didn’t win the election.

Is the sun setting on America’s empire? Has Washington’s influence in the world reached its apogee? Or has the U.S. just plain lost its mojo? Paul Starobin isn’t the first to ask these questions, but in his book After America he provides a uniquely informative take on what the answers imply for our global future. He argues that America has already lost its preeminence, weakened by imperial overstretch, rampant debt, and the decline of its economic power. Now it’s a matter of figuring out what the precise consequences of a post-American future will be.

I was going to leave well enough alone–to take Marc Ambinder’s limited apology for labeling DFHs who believed the threat level system to be politicized as “gut haters,” accept that he is at least thinking about these things, and move on. But given Ambinder’s follow-up, I’d like to use it to make a point of Village journalism methods.

It was somewhat disconcerting when Donna Edwards would not confirm to the Hill this week Edwards, who signed the letter, that she would vote against any bill through conference that did not have a public plan.

Small business reps in Maine told Sen. Snowe they opposed a mandate to purchase health insurance for their employees unless there’s a public option that makes compliance more affordable. Olympia Snowe owes them a better answer than “it’s off the table.”

After twenty years of a religious version of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America yesterday opened its clergy roster to GLBTs in “lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships.”

It’s about time. Beyond the religious aspect to the vote, it has secular political implications as well.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro…

Things that many Americans, thanks in large part to well-financed conservative myth machines, think are true but which aren’t: “The ‘Wild West’ Didn’t Have Gun Control.” Oh yes it did.

The President had wonderful words for both LGBT awardees at the Medal of Freedom ceremony at the White House earlier this week. Billie Jean King, though, proposed an ongoing project for the community: who else in our history should be so honored? The groundbreaking athlete will put together a list and forward it to the President for consideration in future years; have you any ideas of LGBT Medalists for Barack Obama to consider?