As a pure matter of principle, after almost a year of blaming its exclusion on lack of votes in the Senate, there is no way it should die in the House.

Call progressive members of Congress who pledged to vote against any health care bill that doesn’t have a public option, and tell them to insist on its inclusion in the House bill. Then let us know what they say.

Call Now

Just a brief word on the church of the savvy smugly saying that whip counts efforts like this are misguided because of all the “wiggle room.” I’m building that into my analysis. I think I’m representing an accurate snapshot in time of where the House is at on this bill. People are going to guess about this anyway, so a whip count that takes into account other information has plenty of value, more than a simple info dump.

In other words, NBC, I’m way ahead of you.

Quite a few observers, including this blogger, have been stunned and frustrated at the refusal to investigate what was almost certain accounting fraud at Lehman. Despite the bankruptcy administrator’s effort to blame the gaping hole in Lehman’s balance sheet on its disorderly collapse, the idea that the firm, which was by its own accounts solvent, would suddenly spring a roughly $130+ billion hole in its $660 balance sheet, is simply implausible on its face. Indeed, it was such common knowledge in the Lehman flailing about period that Lehman’s accounts were sus that Hank Paulson’s recent book mentions repeatedly that Lehman’s valuations were phony as if it were no big deal.

Well, it is folks, as a [pdf] newly-released examiner’s report by Anton Valukas in connection with the Lehman bankruptcy makes clear. The unraveling isn’t merely implicating Fuld and his recent succession of CFOs, or its accounting firm, Ernst & Young, as might be expected. It also emerges that the NY Fed, and thus Timothy Geithner, were at a minimum massively derelict in the performance of their duties, and may well be culpable in aiding and abetting Lehman in accounting fraud and Sarbox violations.

US Central Command has provided a clarification to my post from Saturday where I discussed command authority over detainee operations. General Stanley McChrystal does have authority over JTF-435, which operates US prisons in Afghanistan.

My sense has always been that the Teabagger crowd is more glibertarian than fundie, but these comments from the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins–one of the most important right-wing Christian leaders in the Bush/Rove GOP coalition–indicate a real hostility brewing.

FDL News has obtained the first ad from Arkansas for Change, an independent expenditure group working against Blanche Lincoln. It will start running today. Lincoln faces a May 18 primary challenge from the state’s Lieutenant Governor, Bill Halter. Halter is not mentioned in the spot.

After Dick Durbin (D-IL) got attacked for saying that he would whip against the public option, he sent out his spokesman to lie about reconciliation in a pathetic attempt to justify Durbin’s role in trying to kill the public option.

The good news: student loan reform will likely get added to the reconciliation bill in order to meet baseline savings requirements. The bad news? The savings requirement would have been met by the public option, which is apparently not in consideration by Democratic leadership.

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that the public option would continue as an enduring electoral issue. Grayson’s bill, which is slightly but really not all that different, would keep it going on a legislative track as well.

Newsweek’s Mark Hosenball reports that Dianne Feinstein and other Senate Dems have accused the Department of Homeland Security’s spooks of using right wing propaganda to develop finished intelligence reports on Muslims.