Joe Hagan has an epic softball in the New York Magazine describing PapaDick Cheney’s plan to salvage his legacy. Or rather, Liz “BabyDick” Cheney’s plan to salvage Daddy’s legacy, and with it, launch her own career.

Totally aside from any merits of the ethics charges against Massa, recall that Norm Dicks, Jack Murtha, Jim Moran and Roland Burris all had their ethics charges dismissed in December. And then quelle suprise! Roland Burris, who had been threatening to withhold his cloture vote over the Senate bill without a public option, instantly became a convert. The rest were all safely in the “yes” column in the House. You could pretty much eat live babies on TV and get your ethics complaint dismissed if you were ready to play ball and vote for PhRMAcare.

The nation is suffering its worst economic slump since the 1930s. 10% of the country is out of work, many more have given up looking for a job, and even those middle class Americans who are fortunate enough to be employed are struggling to make ends meet under the burden of higher medical costs. And yet, this is what Blanche Lincoln is really worried about these days.

Lynn Woolsey writes today in Roll Call: “The day after the health care legislation is passed, I will introduce a bill calling for the public option.”

Anyone who would write those words should not be the head of the Progressive Caucus.

The Obama administration, in its push to get the House to vote for the Senate’s health care reform bill unchanged, is pointing to the serious issue of lack of competition in the health insurance market as a powerful reason for reform. Obama’s health care proposal, however, no longer does much to actually solve the problem.

This is the deal Lindsey Graham thinks he can use to get the White House to abandon a civilian trial for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed: Republican support for the closure of Guantanamo Bay. According to the more sophisticated explanation/rationalization I’ve heard for accepting the deal, it’s not so much that Graham can really bring along Republicans as much as he can provide political cover for reticent Democrats to vote for what in 2008 was a bipartisan consensus position, endorsed by even George W. Bush and John McCain. This is the world we live in.

Eric Massa hosted his weekly radio show on his last day as the Congressman and intimated that the Democratic Party pushed him out of his seat to pick up a vote on health care. He also detailed the charges against him and said he would perhaps rescind his resignation if the move to toss him from Congress became a “national story.”

On March 13, 2004, Jack Goldsmith and Patrick Philbin went to Jim Comey’s house on a Saturday to alert him of something. The military had contacted Goldsmith, wanting to use a more extreme form of torture against a detainee–something like isolation, waterboarding, water dousing, or death threats.* But, as Goldsmith had told DOD General Counsel Jim Haynes the previous December, the March 2003 opinion Yoo wrote that authorized DOD’s use of such techniques was hopelessly flawed. Goldsmith wanted to explain the flaws of the memo to Comey to get his support for withdrawing the memo. Comey, who was then acting Attorney General (since John Ashcroft was in the ICU with pancreatitis), agreed with Goldsmith’s judgment and–the OPR Report explains–later got John Ashcroft to agree that “any problems with the analysis should be corrected.”

• Willard: from moderate to wingnut.
• Would there be this much drama around an effective chief of staff?
• Only because they got caught.
• How progressives made health care reform stronger.
• Hilarious.
• You must see this righteous smackdown of Orrin Hatch.

These colors don’t run, or explain anything in particular detail.