Photographs from Pittsburgh

As covered here and here, a Motion For Summary Judgment is pending in al-Haramain v. Obama, set in front of Judge Vaughn Walker in NDCA. Just to keep you apprised of the status, there has been a stipulation and order entered to extend certain time limits previously set in the matter.

Ryam Grim of the Huffington Post got his hands on a July 7 memo documenting the deal between PhRMA and the White House, which both are now denying but which was initially confirmed by Jim Messina, Deputy White House Chief of Staff to the New York Times. The memo was ostensibly written following the July 7 meeting at the White House between pharmaceutical industry representatives and members of the administration (whom the White House refused to name).

Chuck Grassley confirmed that the end-of-life provision has been dropped from the Senate Finance Committee bill because it’s too “open to interpretation.” Is it time to convene a death panel for bipartisanship on health care?

Scott Shane’s new article in the New York Times on the background to the Mitchell-Jessen story may work as a prosecutorial brief, but it presents a narrative about the origins of the SERE-inspired torture program that is misleading in its particulars. As a result, though the article has some interesting new bits of information, and appears to be the result of a great deal of work, it presents an overly simplistic

So I took a tour of a steel plant today. There was a lot of hot, molten steel, but also high-tech computerized systems running the show, making sure just enough steel is poured into a mold at just the right temperature and speed, among many other functions. The tour was sponsored by the Alliance for American Manufacturing and the Campaign for America’s Future as part of the Netroots Nation conference here in Pittsburgh.

My name is Herta Llusho, I am 19 years old, and I writing this because I am about to be deported. I was born in Albania and was brought to the United States when I was 11 years old. With the help and support of my family, I have struggled through more than seven years of legal proceedings to find a way to stay in this country legally. Despite our best efforts, on August 19, I will be removed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from the only place I know as my home. I will be sent back to a country that has become a foreign place to me. I don’t even speak Albanian well anymore. My only hope of staying here is for as many people as possible to ask DHS to delay my deportation until the DREAM Act is passed.

Senator Chuck Grassley is frightened of death panels in the House bill, but grandson voted for end-of-life education in Iowa. At lease some of these conservatives don’t breed true.

Even after conservatives called her earlier claim that Obama wanted to gas her baby offensive, “nuts”, and “crazy” the Quitter’s back for more.

This has nothing to do with Blue Dogs, they are only incidental to an ad buy. It’s a persuasion campaign giving Republicans and ConservaDems cover for voting for the “bipartisan” Baucus deal. The notion that it’s targeting Blue Dogs is only to give “liberal” health care reform advocates cover for letting their names be used on this.