Donald Berwick, who’s been heading up efforts to improve Medicare service and lower costs, has withdrawn his nomination, another thoroughly competent, innocent victim of the Republican Goon Squad whose vicious efforts to destroy the concept of government in the public interest have no moral boundaries.

You can always count on Republicans to stick up for the little guy oligarchs.

Personally, given how stupid all three trade deals are, this is one time I would be perfectly happy to see the Republicans shoot the hostage, but I fear Obama will use this as an excuse to make a bad piece of legislation even worse.

What company wouldn’t want to have the government let it sell a product for whatever price it wanted, have the government use its power to stop anyone else from selling the product, and have the government directly or indirectly pay for buying the product?

Senator George LeMieux (R-FL) is starting to feel the heat of pro-migrant voters, specifically Latino voters. Saturday, Univision aired a debate in which current Florida governor and U.S. Senate nominee Charlie Crist came out in support of the DREAM Act. Thursday, Representative Kendrick Meek (D-FL), and also a nominee for U.S. Senate, hand delivered a letter to LeMieux.

The White House obsession with criticizing the “professional left” comes from one harsh truth: that the left has been right on major issues from health care to the stimulus.

But…but…Blumenthal!1!!

Say, have you noticed how often Chuck Schumer has been nuzzling up to Lindsey “Huckleberry” Graham lately?

Orrin Hatch is turning into the Lanny Davis of the GOP. . . .

If we do see a jobs bill from the Senate, the main component (accounting for 87% of the spending at this point) would be the Schumer-Hatch job creation tax credit. This would give businesses a break on their half of payroll taxes (6.2% of salary) for every worker they hire in 2010 who has been unemployed at least 60 days. It would also offer incentives – $1000, I believe – for every year the employee remains with the company beyond 2010. The projected cost is $13 billion dollars.