This is a monumental week for health care reform. If the Congress wants to stick to the President’s perceived schedule and get a bill to his desk before the State of the Union address, they need to act this week. The biggest outstanding issue, at least in recent days, has appeared to be the excise [...]

[Ed. note: Teddy Partridge is still on the scene in San Francisco--and doing an incredible job of bringing the proceedings to us. You can find a list of earlier parts of his liveblog at FDL's dedicated Prop 8 Trial page. And, to update, I see that Teddy has now started a 6th thread of this liveblog--go Teddy!]

Dylan Ratigan has clearly been preparing for his initial run in a new show for MSNBC. Today he offered a detailed yet succinct brief against Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner which covered a multitude of topics – the emails that show the NY Fed instructing AIG to hide information from SEC investigators, the uncapping of the [...]

Krugman owes everyone an explanation as to why he thinks it’s okay to smear someone fairly investigating a legitimate controversy in defense of a friend who mislead people for months, who stood on the sidelines mutely while the White House promoted his work as objective verification of their own policies in a self-generated validation loop.

And he owes Marcy Wheeler an apology.

You could see this one coming. As soon as a local poll on the Massachusetts Senate race showed the Republican dead even among likely voters with Democratic candidate Martha Coakley (now MA’s Attorney General), you knew there would be leaks blaming Coakley for not conducting an inspiring or smart campaign.

Nevermind that a more recent poll by the Boston Globe shows Coakley with a solid 15 percentage point lead. No, the first poll showing Coakley at risk was a perfect opportunity to blame the candidate instead of the real culprits dragging down Democrats everywhere.

Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS), that is.

In Pasadena, several gay rights advocates who had been hoping to view the Prop 8 trial which begun a little less than an hour ago at a US District Court in San Francisco expressed disappointment with the ruling from the Supreme Court blocking video feed access.

Lawyers are settling into their places; it’s 8:38 here. Perhaps the SCOTUS stay has delayed our start here? Twitterers casting the SCOTUS stay as “the first loss for the Olson/Boies team.”

Per MSNBC—The United States Supreme Court has overruled Judge Vaughn Walker, moving to prevent cameras from recording the proceedings in Perry v. Schwarzenegger for later-in-the-day distribution on YouTube. According to the report, the Court’s order will be in place at least until Wednesday. UPDATE: Justice Kennedy would be the “hot judge” for the 9th Circuit—the appeals [...]

We’ve certainly got an active day here at FDL. Dave Dayen and Teddy Partridge will be covering the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial starting today in San Francisco at 11:30 ET/8:30 PT, in the fine tradition that landed FDL on the front page of the New York Times for our Libby liveblog. We have a dedicated page for all trial-related posts, documents, transcripts, live blog and other archives, and will be posting trial videos here as soon as the court puts them up.