Gregg Levine

The House is in election-year mode, the Senate has already cashed their health-sector donations, and Rahm thinks if you withdraw from a fight at the 11th hour, then it doesn’t count as a loss.

Tags: Barack Obama, Democrats, Health care, Mary Landrieu, State of the Union

Bernanke’s “ideas” are all over the 2008 collapse of our economy—and his uncaring hand on the rudder has helped steer us into this “jobless recovery” (a term I am embarrassed by every time I use it). The American people know it, some senators know it, and the Obama Administration is foolish to pretend that they don’t know it.

Tags: Al Franken, Barbara Boxer, Ben Bernanke, Byron Dorgan, Democrats, Federal Reserve, George LeMieux, Sheldon Whitehouse, Ted Kaufman, Tom Harkin

We’re proud to announce the two latest employment opportunities here at Firedoglake, which you can check out by visiting our jobs page. One opening is for a DC Political Reporter, who will have the exciting privilege of being our full-time political correspondent on Capitol Hill. The other is for a Deputy Managing Editor, who will coordinate, edit, and publish content from our wonderful team of writers.

On behalf of the rest of the FDL team, I invite you all to check out our job postings and apply. We look forward to reviewing potential candidates over the next few weeks.

Tags: editor, employment opportunities, Firedoglake, jobs, reporter

To be honest, the year has not been as solidly unpleasant as that morning—we do have those green shoots, that too-small stimulus package that kept this dreadful recession from diving into a deeper depression, for instance—but it has been just as disappointing. From the inability to close Guantanamo, to the unacceptable decision to continue a policy of indefinite detentions; from the remote-controlled predator war in Pakistan, to the all-too-human escalation in Afghanistan; from the failure to really put the Justice Department back in order, to the revelation that, earlier this month, said DoJ retroactively legalized Bush-era collaborations between telecoms and the FBI that saw thousands of Americans spied upon without justification or court order; and, of course, from the campaign promises of serious health care reform, through all the twists, turns, distractions, and outright lies that have turned what should have been a signature moment into a shameful soap opera, this first year of the Obama Administration has been about misdirection, missed opportunities, and missing leadership.

Per MSNBC—The United States Supreme Court has overruled Judge Vaughn Walker, moving to prevent cameras from recording the proceedings in Perry v. Schwarzenegger for later-in-the-day distribution on YouTube.
According to the report, the Court’s order will be in place at least until Wednesday.
UPDATE: Justice Kennedy would be the “hot judge” for the 9th Circuit—the appeals court that [...]

Tags: California, civil rights, Gay rights, LGBT, Perry v. Schwarzenegger

So, this Gruber scandal disappoints. Let me focus on one example.

Remember, back in November, when everyone inside the Beltway was all a-twitter (in both senses of the phrase) about how Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, was making practically every White House staffer read an Atlantic article by Ron Brownstein? That piece, touting what FDL’s own Jon Walker called “free market economagic,” relied heavily on the work of Jonathan Gruber—then billed as “a leading health economist at MIT,” now well-understood to be a super-remunerated contractor in the employ of several parts of the Obama Administration.

Tags: Health care, Jonathan Gruber, Peter Orszag, Rahm Emanuel, Ron Brownstein

In a video that rings so true, it hurts, Lee Stranahan, a former Obama supporter, gives us the aspiring president’s own speech—a speech where Obama makes it plain just how bad an idea the “Cadillac” excise tax on health benefits actually is.

Tags: Barack Obama, Cadillac tax, excise tax, Health care, Lee Stranahan

Obviously, the large part we’ve played in driving and reporting on the health care debate, the dominant story of the latter half of the year, gives FDL a big leg up in any annual overview of the best of online reporting, but the other three stories on Sargent’s top five list were also, for lack of a better word, “ours.”

Tags: 2009, Barack Obama, birthers, blogoshpere, establishment media, Eve Gittelson, Firedoglake, Greg Sargent, Health care, Jane Hamsher, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, kill the bill, Marcy Wheeler, Max Baucus, Medicare, Mike Stark, public option, Rahm Emanuel, Senate bill, town halls, veal pen, whip count

You know where I am going with this, right?

That’s right, I am going straight into a metaphor!

Tags: Barack Obama, progressives, Yule log

With alarms set extra early to catch the Senate’s 7 AM EST vote on health care redeform, you know you ought to be sleeping right now. If the thought of sending billions of taxpayer dollars right into the coffers of the insurance industry is keeping you up, the friendly folks at FDL have preserved in digital amber this fine moment from the Senate leadership’s post-cloture vote presser.

Tags: Chris Dodd, Harry Reid, Health care, Max Baucus, Senate