The AP keeps reporting that the cost of the House health care bill will be $1.5 trillion — even though the neutral Congressional Budget Office pegs it at 2/3 that much: $1 trillion.

Watch as Newt Gingrich and others pick up the AP’s higher price tag and run with it.

Robert Reich says the House got the tax equation right on health care reform.

Jon Taplin isn’t so sure.

Al Gore, Jr.’s daughter, Karenna Gore Schiff, is reportedly eyeing the New York House seat expected to be vacated by Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) so that she can challenge Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY).

Late Update: Gore Schiff’s spokesperson says not true, that she has “no intention” of running.

Is Lindsey Graham (R-SC) laying the groundwork for a “yes” vote on Sotomayor?

They might have gotten off to a slow start but it’s pretty clear that the new media operation Obama had during his campaign is now set up in the White House and starting to hit on all cylinders. Here’s an example: a tightly produced video of the President’s visit to Ghana that’s been posted to the White House website.

Sens. John Barrasso (R-WY) Tom Coburn (R-OK), both MDs, have an online show they cleverly call “The Senate Doctors Show.”

It’s a write-in show designed to pushback on health care reform. So no questions about your chronic skin condition or mystery ache or pain.

Late Update: TPM Reader MR has more pressing questions:

But will they be taking questions about personal relationships? You know, how I should tell my wife I’m having an affair, or how best to break off that affair, or how to reconcile with my wife and family after the affair becomes a major news story?

Karenna Gore Schiff is knocking down a report in Roll Call today that she’s looking at running for Congress from New York. A Gore family spokesperson tells TPMDC that Gore Schiff “has no intention of running for the House of Representatives.”

I find it kind of comical that Craig Crawford says that the upshot of the Sotomayor hearings is that Obama is now free to go “hard left” in his next Supreme Court appointment. But the rest of his post is actually right on target.

“Racially-tinged inferences, snide liberal bashing and the shameless pandering to anti-intellectual sentiment that once won the day for Republicans are now falling flat,” he writes. Indeed, the attacks have “showcased just how narrow and out of touch their political base has become.”

This is actually a very acute takeaway from this entire drama. Read More

Zack Roth gets us up to speed on the latest developments surrounding that secret CIA assassination program hidden from Congress — and a look at why it might have been so radioactive.

It turns out that Doug Hampton, the Senate staffer whose wife had an affair with Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), did not report on his Senate disclosure form the $96,000 “gift” he and his wife received from Ensign’s parents.