The new expensive backscatter x-ray scanners installed at airports are fairly worthless because they can’t stop a determined individual from smuggling contraband onto an airplane in a body cavity. But that’s not all; it appears the scanners can easily be defeated by a kitchen rolling pin and a roll of tape.

In a cloture vote, the Senate today voted by a 67-28 margin to cut off debate on the new START nuclear arms reduction treaty, displaying enough bipartisan support to ratify the treaty with a 2/3 majority tomorrow.

With new START and the continuing resolution out of the way, the only other big item left that the Senate would like to pass is the 9-11 health care bill. It appears that Tom Coburn will drag out passage of that bill, potentially killing it in the lame duck.

The FCC allowing AT&T and friends to write the new rules for Internet access recalls what happened when California handed the pen to Enron and friends in writing rules for electricity markets. Deja vu all over again

Hilariously, Warner and Chambliss, who want to bring forward a plan that cuts the budget deficit by $4 trillion over the next ten years, just both voted for a tax cut bill that, if the Bush tax rates are continued into perpetuity… add $4 trillion to the budget over the next ten years. This is why I thought that the tax cut deal had to be looked at as a whole. You could have basically eliminated the need for this Warner-Chambliss clown show simply by doing nothing.

Why is everyone making such a fuss about Haley Barbour’s comment that life in his home state “wasn’t that bad” during the Jim Crow era? During Barbour’s teen years, Mississippi was a perfectly fine place to grow up

Jon Stewart got the ball rolling, and now even Shepard Smith is so disgusted by GOP obstructionism on the 9/11 health care bill that he read a list of the names of Republican senators who would not appear on Fox News to speak on the issue. DeMint, McConnell, Graham, Hatch, McCain… nobody wants to appear on TV and take responsibility for what they are doing. It’s revolting that the GOP has demagogued 9/11 to facilitate the wholesale looting of the U.S. Treasury in just about every conceivable fashion, but they don’t want to take responsibility for what happened to those we sent in to clean up the mess.

Senate Democrats want to pass the 9-11 health care bill. But the biggest enemy is not Republican votes, but the clock. Both Tom Coburn and Mike Enzi have signaled that they will force the maximum amount of time to block the bill. It’s fairly disgusting that time cannot be made during the holidays to care for rescue workers sickened through no fault of their own.

I mentioned yesterday that the FCC hearing on net neutrality would be streamed live this morning, but the drama was removed from the proceedings last night, when Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn announced, with some reluctance, that they would support Julius Genachowski’s pretend net neutrality plan. We have terrible broadband in the US, and by all accounts, we’re now going to pay more for it, with less choice of content. It’s all very sad and I don’t know where the open Internet movement goes from here.

Here’s one of the clearest signs that much of the so-called ideology in Washington is tribal partisanship: take note how many “liberals” rush to defend the individual mandate that forces people to buy private health insurance. An individual mandate to buy private health insurance has never been progressive. It is less cost effective, less consumer [...]

A new story at Truthout, which I co-authored with Jason Leopold, takes up the investigation of the story into the mass drugging of Guantanamo detainees with the controversial drug mefloquine, aka Lariam, which we originally reported earlier this month. In an interview with the former commander of the Guantanamo Naval Hospital, who signed off on the mefloquine use, Captain Albert Shimkus said “There were certain issues we were advised not to talk about.”