Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) makes a good point about how the Obama tax plan creates a potential future political pitfall for Social Security.

Another internal Fox News email via Media Matters, this one from vice president of news Bill Sammon on the network’s policy on global warming:

Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data … we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.

The backstory here.

It’s flying a bit under the radar, but there’s an interesting power play underway in the House. With Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) set to become chairman of the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee — and promising to move aggressively to investigate the Obama Administration — Democrats in the House and the White House were worried that the outgoing chairman, Rep. Ed Towns (D-NY), was not up to the task of standing up to Issa and fending off runaway investigations. So there’s been a move afoot since Election Day to replace Towns as ranking member. Read More

Sen. Kyl (R) accuses Sen. Reid (D) of disrespecting Christians by scheduling Senate business between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

I was thinking it had been a while since one of our top politicians here in New York had been hit with a major felony indictment. And sure enough, the Senate Majority Leader, Sen. Pedro Espada Jr (D-Bronx) and his son were just charged with stealing more than half a million dollars from clients of their nonprofit health care network.

The House will take up DADT repeal yet again tomorrow. This time it’s the standalone repeal bill after the previous defense bill failed in the Senate. The House is expected to pass it, clearing the way for a Senate vote — if the Senate can manage to get the bill onto its calendar.

An unhappy Al Franken blames Obama for having “punted on first down” but will vote for the temporary extension of tax cuts for the wealthy: “I am taking the President at his word that he will fight harder to put an end to these wasteful tax breaks in 2012 than he did in 2010.”

Jon Stewart: “Since when does the Republican Party make 9/11 first responders stand over in the corner with the gays and Mexicans?” Watch.

This is one of several reasons why the 2012 GOP primary process is going to be really entertaining. Mitt Romney had a dignity crushing series of losses in 2008. I’ve heard it suggested, plausibly, that the GOP’s change away from winner-take-all primaries could help him in 2012. But I still think the nature of his loss in 2008 does not bode well for him in 2012.

In any case, there are two more big liabilities on his ledger: 1st, he changes his ideology about every cycle and his actual policies predilections seem much more moderate than what flies in today’s GOP. In other words, it’s hard for him to shake the perception that he’s a weather vane who doesn’t have any real political principles. 2nd, and more devastating, the terror of ‘Obamacare’ is based on the legislation Mitt pushed through in Massachusetts. It’s his signature piece of legislation. And going into 2012, that’s a big, big problem.

To overcome those liabilities, Mitt has to do everything in his power to avoid a scenario in which he’s the ‘moderate guy’ in the 2012 primary season against some other person who ends up as the Tea Party / hard right standard bearer, whether that’s Palin or maybe Huckabee or whoever else. And so you have him at every point needing to stake out the most hard right position available — in this case, proposing that we get rid of our system of unemployment insurance since, in his telling, unemployment insurance promotes laziness.

All that said, while I’d bet against Romney beating President Obama in 2012, he’s probably the only one of the current crop who even stands a serious chance.

Time was you could rely on birthers to fight the good fight to the bitter end. No amount of reason or common sense would stand in their way. They were crazy and they liked it that way. No longer, I’m afraid.

Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, an Army surgeon, seemed like the kind of birther you could rely on. We’ve been following his story closely for months. He refused his deployment on the grounds that any orders originating with President Obama were unlawful. He was prepared to throw his Army career away and risk jail time to prove that Obama was not eligible to be President. Threatened with court-martial, he didn’t back down. His plan, eventually thwarted by a military judge, was to use the court-martial proceedings to conduct discovery on Obama’s birth/origin.

A true patriot of The Crazy, this one. Hard core.

Until now. Read More