Huckabee returns to his roots, if you’ll pardon the pun.

More like this please. Judge Rakoff shows bank regulators how it’s done!

Bill Black called it last March, and a new Federal Reserve Board IG report makes it official: the Fed does not do “oversight” terribly well. Oversight FAIL, OTOH . . .

Could someone remind me why giving the Fed more oversight authority is a good idea?

Necessity is the mother of invention, or at least innovation. And for decades drug cartels have been innovating, trying to stay one step ahead of law enforcement. Low flying planes, airdrops, speed boats all had their moment, and now the Colombian drug dealers have turned to semi-submersible boats to haul tons of cocaine into Mexico for sale there and importation into the United States.

Our campaign to hold Glenn Beck accountable for his race-baiting and fear-mongering has been a great success, with 62 advertisers making it clear that they don’t want their brands linked to Beck’s vile rhetoric. Up until now, however, there’s been a question of what the real consequences are for Beck and for Fox, especially as Beck’s ratings have soared.

A new poll of US doctors shows strong support for a public option. So that means both patients and doctors want the choice of a goverment-sponsored public health insurance option. Why is the US Senate getting in between patients and their doctors?

There are 4 congressional districts in the state –  Mike Ross’s is the second most Democratic.  So the likelihood that all the “nay” votes are clustered in his district is pretty much nil.

Maybe Ross means his other constituents, the lobbyists from the medical industrial complex.

You think your town hall meeting’s law enforcement presence was authoritarian and heavy-handed? Check this out: San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore deployed (but did not use) military type sonic crowd-control devices at two town hall meetings, one held by GOP Darrell Issa and the other by Democrat Susan Davis. These devices are the same as those used to control crowds of insurgents in the Iraq war theatre and have been linked to ear and brain injury.

The teabaggers aren’t strong on nuance and won’t care whether there’s a public plan or not. The anti-insurance industry campaign the White House wouldn’t let anyone run last summer because they didn’t want to drive AHIP from the bargaining table is now okay because they are desperate to get “permission to buy” in these districts — even Republicans hate insurance companies. I know Blue Dogs who have openly wondered why such a populist campaign wasn’t run in their districts to give them cover from the start.

George Stephanopoulus grossly misrpresented a new ABC poll on public views about the health reform effort and the public option, claiming support for reform rises without the public option. The actual poll shows that when the public option is explained, support dramatically rises.