White House flack, on the Fox News takedown: “We simply decided to stop abiding by the fiction, which is aided and abetted by the mainstream press, that Fox is a traditional news organization.” That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

There’ve been a number of conflicting reports about the fate of the Public Option this morning, especially in the House. We just had our morning editorial meeting. And I wanted to give you a quick read on what the confusion seems to be about.

The issue really doesn’t seem to be whether the House thinks it can pass a Public Option. The confusion and conflicting reports seem to stem from not distinguishing between two versions of the Public Option that most TPM Readers are probably already familiar with — namely, a Public Option like that advanced by Sen. Schumer and the more turbo-version proposed by Sen. Rockefeller.

Basically, it’s not clear the House really has the votes for a Rocky-style Public Option. That’s where this morning’s Politico piece may be on solid ground — because Pelosi, or at least her office, had appeared to be saying they had that locked. But that doesn’t mean the Public Option is dead in the House because it seems pretty clear they do have the votes for Schumer-style Public Option. And that latter, critical point was lost in this morning’s headlines.

It’s been a long time since the left has had a bomb-thrower on par with Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL): Cheney has “blood that drips from his teeth“

House leaders called off the roll on the public option in their private caucus meeting today got a lot of ‘I’m undecideds’ in response.

Fox News’ John Stossel will be a participant in “health care town halls,” i.e., rallies against health care reform, set up by the anti-reform group Americans For Prosperity.

Harry Reid is apparently pretty close to lining up 60 votes for a Public Option with opt-out clause.

But the White House is trying to shut down his efforts. They want Snowe on board. Period.

Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), the longest serving member of the House, tells TPMDC what he told reluctant members of the Democratic caucus in the group’s meeting this morning about the politics of passing a health care reform bill.

Virginia’s Democratic nominee for governor, Creigh Deeds, told reporters this afternoon that he has no idea why the White House is reportedly displeased with his campaign performance.

If you’ve had Fox News on today, you’ve seen them cranking up the indignation machine over a supposed new incident between the network and the White House. The claim is that the White House denied Fox the same access other networks had to a press briefing at the Treasury Department yesterday. But we’ve looked into it, and it turns out that’s not what happened. Christina Bellantoni has the details on how a miscommunication over the TV pool feed has Fox playing First Amendment victim.

There’s been a roiling controversy of late about the upcoming J Street conference. We’ve written a bit about it. But in what I guess is a paradox, in part because of my own strong feelings on the subject, I haven’t written much about it myself. In any case, I just read this interview The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg did with J Street’s Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami.