Politico had a catch-up article about the interesting coalition opening up around Ben Bernanke’s re-appointment and issued of Fed transparency. I say a “catch-up” article because they’re just getting to where I was five days ago. Nonetheless, they have some interesting additions to this. I was amused by Jim DeMint’s palpable fear about being on [...]

Soon that cry will go out over the land, as it does on most Monday nights during football season. We watch the spectacle of the regular season through the playoffs and on to the Super Bowl. We see pro football players dating super models, doing commercials, and being themselves in cameos on TV shows.

The president, in an economic speech before the Brookings Institution on Tuesday, will argue that the money would be well spent by funding projects to build bridges and roads, weatherize homes, and provide other assistance for small businesses as well as the unemployed.

Greg Sargent reports, it’s highly likely that there will be no conference committee, with the House expected to accept whatever the Senate passes.

[Ed. Note: Dave Dayen also has something to say about this.] There has been multiple unsourced reports that at least some Senate Democrats are considering a possible early Medicare buy in for older Americans. The numbers I have seen indicate that the idea would be to allow people over 55 or 60 to buy into [...]

Seton Hall has a new report out today on the purported suicides of three Gitmo detainees–Yassar Talal Al Zahrani, Mani Shaman Turki Al Habardi Al Tabi, and Ali Abdullah Ahmed–who all died on June 10, 2006. The report catalogs the many reasons to doubt that these men engaged–as the government claimed when they died–in asymmetrical warfare by committing suicide all at the same time.

Ben Nelson’s amendment restricting abortion services coverage in the exchanges is nearing the Senate floor for a vote.

Chris Hedges thinks so, and doesn’t care much for the President, either.

Randy Shaw says, “FDR knew that his progressive base would publicly protest anything short of radical reform; to date, Obama has no such fears.” We’re going to have to start assessing where our loyalties lie — to the issues we say we believe in, or to the personalities we’ve attached ourselves to in the process of achieving them. The left has been largely comfortable in its belief that supporting one was the same as supporting the other. The future of a viable progressive movement is going to mean assessing where those two roads diverge.

This weekend scores of One Voice For Choice volunteers gathered in the homes of their friends and neighbors in Texas and California and began reaching out to thousands of pro-choice (and very likely) Democratic voters across the country.

Stupak, can you hear us now? It’s the sound of your bluff being called. Motivated voters will not allow you to hold health care reform hostage at the expense of a woman’s right to chose.