I don’t know who thought that penalizing people 2% of their income if they refuse to buy the product of private insurance companies was a good idea. Maybe the same guy who thought NAFTA would be a winner for the Democrats in 1994.

Washington Post is reporting labor leaders have struck a deal with the White House to avoid having union plans taxed under health care reform. And it really doesn’t look good.

So Glenn Beck asked the Quitter who her favorite Founding Father is, and she answered “all of them” — which was, totally coincidentally, exactly same answer she gave Katie Couric when asked what newspapers she read. Anyway, Beck wouldn’t have it, and when pressed, she came up with — tada! — George Washington.

The good news is that our new system for managing large amounts of “institutional memory” on the Gruber contract is a success. We used it yesterday to build the post entitled How the White House Used Jonathan Gruber’s Work to Orchestrate the Appearance of Broad Consensus, which was widely circulated and discussed.

But it’s ironic that just as Rupert Murdoch begins blocking content from search engines, they should be cribbing the work of others without credit. McJoan gives an accurate rundown of how the discovery was made — DailyKos commenter Mote Dai mentioned it in slinkerwink’s diary. Marcy Wheeler picked it up and ran with it, uncovering the other HHS contract which began presolicitation in February of last year. Ben Smith contacted Gruber and printed his email response.

Ed. Note: FDL has complete team coverage of Perry v. Schwarzenegger–including more legal analysis, court documents, videos, and liveblogging direct from the federal court in San Francisco. You can find it all on our dedicated Prop 8 page.

From the American Foundation for Equal Rights’ (plaintiffs) website, here is a preview of today’s planned expert witness testimony.

Also! Check out the FDL Prop 8 hub for more about the trial, including video news clips, links to court documents, and live tweets from the courthouse all day from other attendees and observers.

Thank you for your continued generous support, without which this work would be impossible!

With three more days to go, an ultimate agreement seems a tall order. But the President is fully engaged in these final negotiations, and whatever comes out will bear his stamp.

If unions take this deal, it’s a sell-out of epic proportions. I’m hard pressed to think of a deal unions could cut in health care that would cause more long-term damage to not just the credibility of the labor movement, but the middle class.

Does the Chinese Google attack impinge on the top secret US Terrorist Surveillance Program? It might.

• Devastation in Haiti.
• Over 100,000 dead?
• Teh Googles vs. China.
• No he doesn’t.
• “Radical cleric.” I like the sound of that.
• No! You don’t say, Harry.