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You might consider starting your day with the text of Obama’s speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. A lot there to digest.

Grumblings within the Congressional Black Caucus that Obama hasn’t done enough to address the soaring unemployment rate among African Americans. That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Jon Stewart to senators: Come on, folks, keep it real.

For most of the past 40 years, the Republican Party has wanted to kill Medicare (drown it in the bathtub even). Then over the summer, the GOP suddenly became the party that wanted to “save” Medicare from some of the retooling of the program that health care reform would entail (including funding cuts). But now that a compromise proposal has emerged that would expand Medicare, Republicans have reverted to their true selves.

I was raised by a scientist (life sciences) and then studied some history of science in graduate school. And because of both I approach all scientific knowledge with what I think is a healthy measure of skepticism. Because our understanding of the natural world is often very different from one decade, certainly from one century, to the next.

But to maintain a skepticism which is rooted in the inherently tentative nature of all scientific knowledge is quite different from assuming that the science is wrong and that what’s right is what I’d prefer to be true even though I don’t know anything about the science at all — which is where a lot of the public discussion of climate change seems to occur. Read More

Editor & Publisher, a trade mag that’s been a stalwart of the industry for a very long time (since 1884), is shutting down.

Pelosi softens line on Public Option in light of senate negotiations.

While the Senate hashes out the public option compromise, the other big sticking point on health care reform is abortion. As Brian Beutler reports, House Democrats are already preparing for how to massage the issue so that reform isn’t scuttled by pro-life Dems while not alienating pro-choice Dems in the House and Senate.

House GOPer: Courtroom sketch artists could lead to a nuclear attack by terrorists.