Today on Hardball, Jim Cooper was on to discuss the Stupak amendment and how the House and Senate can work through it to reach a compromise. He had a long conversation with Chris Matthews about how conservative Democrats needed this vote to sign on to the bill. He said that people were confused about how to best maintain the Hyde Amendment status quo, among other things. He said that the bill is likely to be changed, and that the Senate could choose to move it away from the Stupak amendment in the end. He chastised the Rules Committee for distributing language that the Stupak Amendment codified the Hyde Amendment when that was the language from Stupak himself, and he said that the amendment would in fact, for the first time, restrict indirect taxpayer subsidies of reproductive choice services, rather than direct ones. He said that employers get a deduction of health care expenses on corporate taxes, and yet the Hyde Amendment doesn’t cover that employer-based health care even though there are indirect subsidies for it.

He talked like a college professor, weighing the pros and cons from afar, without mentioning that he voted for the Stupak Amendment.

News reports are swirling today claiming that President Obama has decided to agree to Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s request for 40,000 more troops for Afghanistan. CBS News is running with an “almost 40,000,” but their report goes on to specify  “four combat brigades plus thousands more support troops.” Fox earlier today had the number pegged at [...]

My mother was diagnosed with esophogeal cancer after spending months in the hospital with complications, including an antibiotic resistant bacterial infection and a feeding tube, after a series of operations. Back surgery for which she was not really a good candidate–osteoporosis, 50 years of smoking, decades of heavy drinking were all overlooked or downplayed–left her pretty much home bound and in as much pain as prior to surgery, just different pain, a year of her life lost to hospitals where more than once she was left tied to the bed moaning and thrashing from a urinary track infection until I got there and raised hell, where a rapid intubation (performed by a doctor in a hurry to get to Nancy Reagan’s house and check on her broken hip) caused Mom to be unable to swallow correctly for a month; ICUs; nursing facilities, and home health care.

Take a closer look at the district and the numbers; you’ll realize the chances of a successful primary against Stupak are slim. Better to face the reasons why Stupak has become a household word.

Aides in the Senate leadership expect a version of the Stupak amendment to be debated in the Senate, but only as an amendment, not embedded into the bill being merged by Harry Reid. Amendments on the floor of the House of Representatives typically require a simple majority to pass. Because of the cloture rule, amendments [...]

That’s a pretty damn bad bill. Some are calling it the worst assault on a woman’s right to choose since the passage of Roe v. Wade. And now we hear Ben Nelson wants the Stupak language in the Senate bill. As I told Rick Klein and David Chalian on ABC’s Top Line this morning, I don’t think the Democrats want to spend the political capital to fight for choice. Good thing NARAL and Planned Parenthood are scoring the House bill, because that will be a very good incentive to keep members of the Senate from coming out in favor of it.

Wait…Planned Parenthood and NARAL are scoring the bill, right?

Maybe someone should ask them.

We need to find out where progressive Members of Congress stand on a bill with triggers or opt-outs. Can you call now?

Click here to get the numbers of progressive Reps. and let us know what they say.

Jim White has two important diaries on Joe Lieberman’s promise to hold hearings on the attack on Fort Hood. In the first, Jim notes that such a hearing will whip up anti-Muslim hysteria. In the second, Jim raises concerns about Nidal Hasan’s interrogation. I think both of Jim’s diaries raise important concerns. But I’d like [...]

I’m sorry, but 1,000 Sarah Palin clones, chained to 1,000 typewriters would not produce a sentence like that in 100,000 years.

Back during the Alito confirmation battle, I got into a scrap with NARAL. When Lincoln Chaffee announced that he would vote for cloture on the nomination of Judge Alito as part of the Gang of 14 “compromise” in 2006, I called NARAL’s offices and asked if they were down on the Hill yanking his endorsement. [...]