Last night, Dianne Feinstein signed on to the Bennet letter. along with Jack Reed. Amy Klobuchar and Ben Cardin endorsed using the reconciliation, but were more noncommital on the public option. I can confirm this morning that Tom Udall of New Mexico, who yesterday agreed to reconciliation as a means to finish the bill, is now a yes on the Bennet letter. And Barbara Boxer signed on as well.

The Democrats in Congress have still not reached a deal on how to move health care forward. The current favored strategy is a reconciliation sidecar, but the most recent news makes that seem unlikely to succeed. Weeks after losing the Massachusetts Senate seat, Democrats have still not even reached an agreement on whether to even use reconciliation at all.

The bottom line is that lobbyists wanted to lard up the Baucus-Grassley bill with goodies for themselves, and Reid saw exactly what would happen, that Republicans would drop their support at the last minute and then decry the bill for its pork. And the thing is, if they wanted to add back in all the Baucus-Grassley elements, they could do that on the floor. It’s called “legislating” by offering amendments. If a majority wants to see the tax extenders or the unemployment insurance and COBRA extensions in the bill, and if they’re so popular, they should have no problem getting the required votes. But they don’t want to even proceed to debate on the bill.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency of the Department of Homeland Security tried to pressure undocumented alien informants to provide intel on terrorism. If they didn’t they’d be deported. Now ICE is following through on its demands, and the government frenzy to manufacture terrorist threat appears to be out of control.

Send it to your friends, post it on Facebook, tweet it — this is must-see TV.

Dennis Prager shows us how Frito-Lay is giving in to terrorists.

Featuring new videos from the 3 Titans with Menaham Street Band and The Faux Frenchmen.

The facts about human-caused global climate change have not changed: it’s real, it’s happening, and it’s a bitch. Also, because we are collectively burdened with an utterly dysfunctional political system which allows undue influence to liars, fools, cowards, weenies, loudmouths, hacks, charlatans, and absolute dickweeds, the chances of the American government taking positive action to [...]

On Monday I did a post on what the DOJ IG Report on “Exigent Letters” revealed about the January 8, 2010 OLC opinion exploiting some kind of huge loophole in the Stored Communications Act. I’m now going to look at why–three and a half years after the abuse of exigent letters supposedly ended–Obama’s DOJ felt the need to get what DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine appears to believe is a very dangerous opinion from OLC.

It’s a matter of emphasis. And story after story about the “out-of-control debt,” which is not that out of control, tend to give an impression to the public that they are the biggest problem facing the nation. But the 10 million-odd unemployed Americans would beg to differ. And trusted media outlets favoring the concerns of deficit scolds over those jobless do a disservice to the nation.