The DOJ appointment of a special prosecutor has the Beltway press all aflutter. Why?

Because it’s that thing they do:

The art of the hissy fit lies in your ability to bring the entire media over to the fainting couch over even the most absurd allegations of impropriety and insensitivity.

Conason: “Lest there be any doubt about what he truly wanted, his bill includes a robust public option along with all the insurance reforms and cost controls that the president has endorsed since this process began.”

The least they can do is too much for them.

Meatloaf - Paradise By The Dashboard Light.

What’s on your mind?

There’s no question that nobody out-crazies Glenn Beck on healthcare, or on anything else, for that matter. And there’s likewise not much question the entire Republican party has gone bugshit; the inmates, not content with running the asylum, have decided to poop in it also. And then they’re taking that shit on the road.

August, die she must. The town hall freak show is winding down, the media circus is packing the cameras and satellite dishes and hairspray back into the vans, and Congress is soon heading back to the relative safety of DC. Yet, after all the fuss and bother, they’re probably no more or less resolved to pass health care reform than they were back in June, when those first delirious fevers rose

It is clear the evaluation was written specifically to get permission for waterboarding, and not to undertake a serious psychological evaluation of the prisoner. The report lacks details related to relevant past history that any psychologist would find important in a psychological evaluation, e.g., the quality of his family relationships, the existence of prior traumas, his actual work and school history, etc. Hell, the report never even mentions the “subject’s” age. [Correction: it does; it reports he's 31 years old. - JK]

”They’re for the most part, I hate to say, brain dead, but they’re just looking to raise money from insurance companies and promote a right-wing agenda that is not really very useful in this whole process,” Stark told reporters on a conference call.

Naming a bad bill after Teddy is an insult to his memory. It’s better to name the key thing he wanted, the one thing that was non-negotiable to him, after him: The public option. In that spirit, I decided to break out the graphics program and create a little Teddy for Teddy, and call it “Tedicare”. I’ve put a basic slogan on Tedicare’s chest, but readers are invited to come up with better ones. Tedicare for All!

For-profit health insurance companies stand to make an additional estimated $906bn in premiums if the current plan passes without a public option. That means billions to shareholders, and a big chunk of it comes directly from taxpayers.