One of the four young right-wingers arrested in New Orleans for trying to ‘tamper’ with Sen. Landrieu’s phone lines was Stan Dai. And it seems that Dai had actually carved out a brief career of an intelligence operative wannabe. He got a job running something he called a “defense department regional defense counterterrorism/irregular warfare program. He also claimed to be an assistant director of “Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence at Trinity Washington University”, though Trinity tells us they’ve never heard of him. In this video, Dai discusses his approach to counter-terrorism.
The use of the filibuster has grown over the years. But a look at the history over the past forty years shows a pretty clear pattern.
The proposed “purity test” for GOP candidates being considered by the RNC this week ran into trouble today. It’s not dead yet, but this may signal the end is near.
Read the FBI affidavit in the Landrieu phone tampering case. (First rule of any plumbers operation: dress up like the Village People.)
If the four would-be plumbers weren’t trying to bug Sen. Landrieu’s New Orleans office, then what were they doing?
The latest developments on health care reform this evening: Speaker Pelosi suggests a new two-track legislative strategy.
I heard Mara Liasson on NPR earlier this evening saying she had been wracking her brain and couldn’t think of a SOTU address where the President was “facing a more difficult political landscape.” Oh, please.
Bill Clinton in January 1998 gave his SOTU just 10 days after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke to a Congress where both chambers were controlled by the opposition party and in the same room where he would be impeached within the year.
Or what about President Bush’s 2007 SOTU, just after his party had shockingly lost control of both chambers of Congress and with his lame duck administration deep in turmoil?
Not even a close call.
9:02 PM: Pre-released remarks about Health Care Reform seem fairly restrained and bland.
9:06 PM: Entering the phony everybody likes each other phase.
9:16 PM: See the full text of tonight’s speech.
9:18 PM: Maybe everybody could feel better if they just left the hall and found a few bankers to string up? Sort of everybody get it out of their system.
9:20 PM: Did any Republicans stand and applause for the bank tax?
9:21 PM: Guess the earlier decision to keep all this good stuff secret wasn’t such a good idea.
9:22 PM: Just reminded what a wanker John McCain is. Need to remind myself every once in a while.
9:25 PM: Wait, Republicans are whooping and cheering for the jobs bil? Tax cut on high income earners?
9:26 PM: Eric Cantor and John Boehner don’t have the right facial gestures for when the camera pans on them.
9:28 PM: It’s always hard to remember the precise way things happened before. But the Dems seem particularly eager and antic in their cheers. Not what you’d expect from a Democratic party supposedly so down on the president. And I’m not saying they’re not. They are. But I wonder whether there’s not some level nervous energy, wanting to get excited.
9:32 PM: “I do not accept second place for the United States of America.”
9:33 PM: House lovefest continues.
9:34 PM: Good speech, but the soundtrack? I dunno.
9:35 PM: Listening to this litany, I’m reminded how Republicans are on the wrong side — just politically, let alone on policy — of most signature issues in a populist economic moment. I think there were zero Republicans standing up on any part of Obama’s financial reform agenda — something that polls exceedingly well in addition to being good public policy.
9:38 PM: TPM Reader KD asks: “Is it just me or are these things getting more and more informal and interactive?” I think that’s probably right. Though we won’t have a real president until they take the mic off the podium and fully Oprah it up.
9:42 PM: Jobs, jobs, jobs.
9:44 PM: Health care is so 2009.
9:45 PM: I’m watching on MSNBC and as Obama speaks on Health Care Reform they’re slowly panning across each of the senators who did the most to torpedo it.
9:46 PM: “This problem is not going away.”
9:47 PM: I’m a little curious why so many Republicans are standing for Obama’s invocations on the importance of Health Care reform.