To bring up a reconciliation bill, Congress must first include reconciliation instructions to deal with a specific issue in a budget resolution. This is why the reconciliation instructions included in the upcoming budget resolution are so important.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) promised Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) a vote on the public option in the next few months. The public option can’t overcome a filibuster, so its only hope of becoming law is using a reconciliation bill. The only way a reconciliation bill can be used to pass a public option is if Congress first passed a budget resolution with reconciliation instructions that could be used for health care-related matters. If the upcoming budget does not include reconciliation instructions that could be used for health care, then you know Reid and Sanders were just blowing smoke.

Those are some serious charges. Attempted use of WMD? Seditious conspiracy? America’s self-appointed vigilant Anti-Terror Warriors will certainly be relieved and grateful that the FBI nabbed these guys, right? Wrong.

When we pointed out that this is in fact what the bill does, Ezra dismissed it as “helping activists kill the bill” rather than “actually informing anyone about what is in the bill.” According to Ezra, “the restriction here is not on the right to choose, but on whether primary insurance covers abortion.” Therefore, since the goal of the bill is not restricting a woman’s right to choose, the fact that it does so anyway is just a coincidence and therefore not a valid reason to object to the bill’s passage.

It’s simply more powerful to hear from the workers themselves, with their personal story of sacrifice, making Lincoln’s claim about “saving” the Cooper plant absurd.

If the Obama Administration cares about children having healthy food, why are they letting Blanche Lincoln write the school lunch bill?

Guaranteed issue doesn’t mean a whole lot on its own without accompaniment with some form of community rating. Otherwise, the insurer can increase premiums to such a degree for the particular family that they wouldn’t be able to afford insurance without keeping the child off the policy.

The Catholic Church is really experiencing a similar decline that other respected institutions have felt in recent years. And like those other declines, it’s entirely of their own making.

• Probably just the FBI trying to make conservatives look bad.
• Subway bombing in Moscow.
• More rank GOP hypocrisy.
• The Shrill One on financial reform.
• Heh: “the bridge to nowhere.“
• Meet CNN’s new voice on the right.

I’m sure whatever this militia group was up to, it’s the Democrats fault.

Billie Holiday — Fine And Mellow.