In 2009, during the height of the Health Care Reform push, almost half of the Chamber of Commerce’s contributions came in a single donation of $86.2 million from AHIP, the health insurance lobby. Virtually all of it appears to have been spent on Chamber commercials against the bill.

Coming right on the heels of the Rangel hearing, the ethics hearing for Maxine Waters (D-CA) has been postponed indefinitely after new evidence was discovered.

Reliving the day back at the end of September when Tea Party candidate Joe Miller went to DC to start house hunting and buy some new furniture for his new job as senator.

Stung by efforts to oust him as head of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele lashes out at the party establishment and stakes his claim to a second term on being the Tea Party’s voice at the RNC.

For Democrats, the late election certainly seems like a nightmare from which they are still trying to awake. But perhaps both Republicans and Democrats can come together in a bipartisan fashion to agree that the Sharron Angle campaign was like one very lengthy acid trip or some weird interlude that even a few weeks on is hard to believe actually happened. Here’s a Social Security ad Angle’s campaign was apparently going to run before those DC handlers sent in by the folks in Washington put the kibosh on the whole idea.

The arc of an amazing career, from institutional cold warrior to radical critic of American foreign policy. He died yesterday at 79. Steve Clemons tells his story.

Incoming Rep. Allen West (R-FL) says government “should have put out some type of feelers” before ramping up pat-down policy.

Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) is running to be the head of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has a key role in climate policy. And he created a stir a couple weeks ago after he reiterated his belief that global warming is not a problem because God has promised he wouldn’t destroy the Earth again after Noah’s flood. Charles Jaco, of the KTVI in St.Louis, just interviewed Shimkus on God’s promise and the hidden upsides of global warming.

Little more than a month ago, I did a post on statistics on browser usage at TPM. The gist of the story (with graphs) was that fewer and fewer people are using FireFox and Internet Explorer, while more and more are using Safari and Chrome. Chrome, which is made by Google, is on pretty much pure organic growth, while Safari is being fueled to a significant degree by sales of iPad and iPhone, which basically force users to use Safari.

I just looked at the numbers again. And the shifts are striking, even over the last seven or so weeks. Read More

I don’t know if there’s more to Bayonne, N.J., than Russian hookers and industrial wasteland, as Jon Stewart suggested, but I do know town officials are lacking for a sense of humor.