Federal Judge puts Trump's Travel Ban 2.0 on hold.

Here's where we are. Speaker Ryan from about an hour ago: "This is something we wrote with President Trump."

In other words, let me invite you back on my sinking boat. Ryan went on to say: "This is something we wrote with the Senate committees. So just so you know, Maria (Bartiromo), this is the plan we ran on all last year." So he wants to invite a lot of people onboard.

If you're involved in politics in any way, it is always important to distinguish between what matters, what's important and what will have concrete effects, effects on political outcomes, elections, and so forth. Often they overlap. But that is not always the case.

One thing you learn watching legislative politics for a long time is that when a party has a huge amount staked on passing a piece of legislation, they usually find a way to do it, even if it seems all but impossible on the surface. A big counterexample to this rule of thumb was the failure of health care reform in 1994 when Democrats failed Even to hold a vote on a bill and were promptly crushed in the 1994 midterms. The success of reform in 2010 is a good example of the rule of thumb I'm talking about.

With all this said, on its face, things are looking pretty dicey at the moment for Obamacare repeal.

I wanted to take a moment to recommend a book. But before I do that. I want to start with a quotation.

"Nazi Germany and its overtly exterminationist imperial project of the later 1930s and and early 1940s owed much to the logic of ethnic conflict and irredentism created by the Great War and the redrawing of borders in 1918-19."

I couldn't help noticing this tweet this evening from Vice President Pence, highlighting his and the President's talk today with 'victims' of Obamacare.

In Ohio, I met Greg Knox—a small biz owner hurting under Obamacare. Now, he's at the @WhiteHouse to share his story. https://t.co/TDUN36A9zB pic.twitter.com/dfp4RHty2Y

— Vice President Pence (@VP) March 13, 2017

As I noted earlier, while there were definitely trade offs with Obamacare and it was far from a panacea the idea that the law created a class of 'victims' is at best overstated and largely BS.

It got better when a guy on Twitter pointed out to me that Knox actually has his own write-up on Snopes.com.

The CBO's scoring of the Trumpcare, House GOP 'repeal and replace' plan is out. And it's even worse - for people who need health insurance and the GOP - than most were expecting. The CBO estimates that the plan would leave 14 million more people uninsured in 2018, 21 million more in 2020 and 24 million more in 2026.

24 million people. That's a lot of people.

Today people are apparently finding out and being terribly surprised that Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is a white nationalist and racist and has been that more or less openly for years. Before yesterday's paean to "culture and demographics", Steve King was saying that for every Dreamer who's a valedictorian there are a hundred running drugs. The list of similar statements is all but endless.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) says he's "not prepared" to support the GOP's repeal and replace bill.

This is a prominent, sitting member of Congress commenting on a major European white nationalist politician.

Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies. https://t.co/4nxLipafWO

— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) March 12, 2017

Trump toady Devin Nunes (R-CA), who currently serves as the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, says America should be thanking disgraced former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn for his secret conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak during the 2016 campaign and the presidential transition.

A bit of this site's history and reputation is bound up with its role reporting on the US Attorney Firing Scandal in 2006 and 2007. So with that in mind I wanted to share a few thoughts on the news reported yesterday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had requested the resignation of the remaining 46 US Attorneys who had not already resigned.