Finally, a way to make conservatives think about the profound societal impacts of global warming!

I was able to ask Franken about this in a one-on-one interview at Netroots Nation. He said this was an example of the need to stay vigilant in the implementation process on bills of this nature. “I mean, I like to call what we passed ‘The Health and Human Services Secretary Shall … Act of 2010,’” Franken said, pointing to all the parts of the bill that need to be clarified by that federal agency. However, Franken seemed confident that pressure on the insurers would aid in reducing the amount of reclassification in the system. “It’s not like the medical loss ratio hasn’t been computed before,” Franken said. “I have full confidence that Kathleen Sebelius can get this right.”

Everyone who has tried to make this voluntary system work must know that they are operating without a hammer, a legitimate incentive (not the relatively weak cash outlay HAMP offers) to the banks, in the form of a stick and not a carrot, to implement the modifications. Cramdown could have been that hammer, but a captured Congress decided against it. So all that’s left as leverage for someone facing foreclosure is the threat to walk away.

I can’t quite determine what the Times’s business columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin is trying to tell us about the Bush/NY Fed 2008 backdoor bank bailout via A.I.G. But the evidence he cites seems to support the “backdoor” theory more than ever.

While the $33 billion war supplemental may have the 289 votes needed under suspension of the rules to pass, because Republicans are likely to support it strongly, a growing number of Democrats are expressing second thoughts.

Last week the House passed the Oil Pollution Research and Development Program Reauthorization Act of 2010, a bill that amends the post-Exxon Valdez legislation in order to fund research on oil spills.

As part of this bill, Rep. Alan Grayson attached two amendments to, in his words, “expand research on the effects of these spills on the human beings assigned to clean them up.” Critically, the amendments target both oil and dispersants — ingredients in the toxic stew affecting BP Oil Disaster cleanup workers.

There’s nothing magic about a super-majority, it has not been found to make better or wiser policy, and in the present circumstances it leads to nothing but gridlock, as the nation’s challenges lay unaddressed. Maybe the filibuster is fine if it isn’t used very much, but you cannot expect that in a partisan era. All it does it facilitate broken government.

In May 2005, Rockefeller asked John Helgerson for McPherson’s report. Then in September 2005, Rockefeller asked Porter Goss for the report directly. And Porter Goss–the guy who was actively considering destroying the torture tapes in July 2005 and who ultimately applauded Rodriguez’ success in destroying them–completely blew off Rockefeller’s request.

You can be excused for assuming that Senate Democrats don’t even particularly want the DISCLOSE Act to proceed to the floor today, otherwise they would be making arrangements to have all the Senators in the caucus available for the vote

How unhinged from reality does one have to be to write a sentence like this?