House Democrats, after taking an internal vote, decided against bringing up the Obama-brokered tax deal in its current form.

Public employees lose again.

I was on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show Tuesday, talking about the McConnell-Obama tax cut deal with Ezra Klein, Adam Green and Roger Hodge.

Let’s recap what turned out to be a busy Wednesday in Congress, particularly in the House.

According to DHS’ John Pistole, it’s up to him–his responsibility–to determine what the appropriate balance between privacy and security.

Now, I appreciate that, at some level, it is up to him. He’s in charge of TSA and he’s got to make the final decision whether to implement (or discontinue) a controversial scanning technology.

But it’s not up to him.

The White House to the Democrats: pass it or we all die.

History repeats itself…and nobody has to learn anything.

Ray Charles — Merry Christmas Baby, at The Monastery Of Ettal, Germany, 1979.

I’ve been feeling pretty down about the political scene lately. Not so much about intractable jobs crisis, the stupid wars, the corporate giveaways, the failure to get rid of blatant discrimination like Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the inability to do anything about climate change, the assault on Social Security, the total absence of accountability for [...]

President Obama, in an attempt to sell the deal he cut on extending the Bush tax cuts, keeps holding up the one-year payroll tax holiday as his big win. Defenders of the deal, such as Ezra Klein, act like without this deal, there would be no way Obama could have gotten this payroll tax holiday. I think this is an inherent misunderstanding of the Republican position. Since well before this deal, I thought a payroll tax holiday was going to be one of the few big bipartisan things Obama and John Boehner would agree to. I have zero reason to believe Obama couldn’t have gotten the payroll holiday later as a stand-alone bill, completely separate major concessions to the GOP.