Texas is one step closer to requiring textbook publishers to cover Phyllis Schlafly and Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America as well as offer evidence that Joe McCarthy has been vindicated by history.
Last night 60 Minutes had a segment on American doctors who have rushed to Haiti to try to treat the wounded and are stuck trying to sterilize rusted medical instruments with rum. It’s a deceptively simple yet very poignant and revealing report from Byron Pitts. Watch (caution: not for the squeamish).
It seems pretty clear now that the plan if Martha Coakley loses tomorrow is to get the House to pass the Senate bill with a promise of revisions in a separate bill, to be passed in the Senate through the reconciliation process. But here’s the frightening question: if Scott Brown wins Ted Kennedy’s senate seat, do all those Democratic votes in the House stay in place? Or does the shock of a Bay State upset jolt enough conservative Dems into refusing to vote for the Senate bill, even after they already voted for the more liberal House bill? Read More
With the prospects in Massachusetts looking … well, uncertain, what’s Plan B on passing the Health Care bill? As Dems look for a way to avoid the unthinkable, a new plan is surfacing that involves having the House pass the senate bill in toto in exchange for a promise to pass an amending bill later through reconciliation which would include the compromise changes now demanded by the House.
As sad day at TPM as Norm Coleman will not run for governor of Minnesota after all.
Dismissing TPM’s report that his campaign is treating all its staff as independent contractors and not providing them with health insurance, Scott Brown (R-MA) says: “The people who are working for me, they’re happy.”
Joe Biden is making noises about revising the Senate’s cloture rules: “This is the first time every single solitary decision has required 60 senators. No democracy has survived needing a supermajority.” That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
There were some hints over the weekend that Brown’s momentum might have ebbed. But PPP doesn’t see it.