So, Dick Cheney, since you’re speaking about not taking terrorism seriously: Did you read the PDBs that the CIA was frantically lobbing at your administration during the spring and summer of 2001?

I think I enjoyed the holidays a little too much. It feels like I put on a few extra pounds that must come off quickly. Any ideas?

Featuring Rodrigo y Gabriela and Umphrey’s McGee.

So, this Gruber scandal disappoints. Let me focus on one example.

Remember, back in November, when everyone inside the Beltway was all a-twitter (in both senses of the phrase) about how Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, was making practically every White House staffer read an Atlantic article by Ron Brownstein? That piece, touting what FDL’s own Jon Walker called “free market economagic,” relied heavily on the work of Jonathan Gruber—then billed as “a leading health economist at MIT,” now well-understood to be a super-remunerated contractor in the employ of several parts of the Obama Administration.

It’s clear that Rahm understood that Obama’s enormous challenges also represented enormous opportunity. Unfortunately, he either didn’t realize that opportunity itself is not sufficient, or failed to notice that FDR did not save the country and attain incredible popularity and power by bailing out corporate interests at the expense of everyone else.

The simple truth is that, in Washington, you can’t endorse, or even stop fighting, a bad bill and then expect Congress to improve it to your liking.

OMB director Peter Orszag and MIT economists Jonathan Gruber are both very smart, successful individuals. While I may not agree with them on every policy, that does not mean I don’t respect their intelligence. Both have knowledge and perspective to add to the health care debate. The problem is that it turns out they have the exact same insider perspective.

A joint approach is the right approach if you want to see everyone’s information. But it is to say that within that joint entity, analysts need — wait for it — a law enforcement approach to terrorism.

Ed Towns, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, just announced that he would hold hearings into the emails that show how the New York Federal Reserve delayed disclosure of AIG counter-party payments, hiding public information from federal regulators.

One of the biggest puzzles in Jonathan Gruber’s explanation for why he hasn’t been disclosing his $400,000 HHS contract as he has led the campaign to support the bill is timing. By his own admission, he revealed the contract for a disclosure form associated with a December New England Journal of Medicine article. That form was dated November 30.