Yesterday afternoon, I asked Louisiana native David Kurtz if I was right that the upstate 5th District, in terms of progressive values and good governance, was basically the Louisiana of Louisiana. He acceded to this characterization. And now we get some taste of why.
Clearly, freshman Rep. Vance McAllister (R-LA) was snogging with a member of his staff. And no one forced him to do that. (Not to worry, the woman in question has now been fired – so I guess that settles that.) But from the start yesterday, given where the video surfaced, it looked a lot like the local Republican establishment taking the opportunity to take McAllister out.
This is a must read on the Obamacare front. One of the most detailed studies to date says that the number of newly insured Americans is likely dramatically higher than all recent estimates have suggested.
Kilgore: You don’t have to be a racist to practice racism.
Gets into that harrowing, controversial and really must read Chait piece on race and partisanship.
I wanted to update my update on comments. Technical builds and how long they’ll take are inherently unpredictable. However, we are tentatively planning to move into a short beta testing phase of the new system with a subset of readers starting tomorrow evening. That will allow us to make any final changes based on code behavior/reactions out in the wild, rather than in the lab. Then we’ll push them live to the whole community.
McAllister may ask Boehner for FBI probe into security video leak.
Conservative news reports that claimed Attorney General Eric Holder wanted to make gun owners wear “tracking bracelets” turned out to be totally bogus.
The last 18 months plus has been a period of transition for TPM, on many levels. One thing we’ve tried to work on is improving the work experience of our employees – what it’s like to work out of one of our two offices day in and day out. TPM is by design an intense place to work. Some of that is based on our being a small operation always trying to punch above our weight, compete against bigger operations. On a deeper level, though, it’s simply in our institutional DNA. But intense work requires down time, a workplace environment that sustains that sort of commitment and intensity. We’ve made certain changes with that in mind and one of them is converting our former New York video studio into a nap room.
I’ve been a little surprised at how relatively little thought GOP politicians and policy wonks seem to have given to living in a world in which Obamacare is successful and not going anywhere. ‘Successful’ of course is a very relative term. I don’t expect Republicans to be cheering its awesomeness any time soon. But for the purposes of this discussion – functioning and creating a substantial constituency of people who have health care or have reduced cost and improved coverage because of Obamacare. We quickly seem to be moving in that direction, as evidenced by Republicans now insisting that repeal is no longer credible without an alternative that provides some version of the benefits and expanded care provided by Obamacare. Sahil Kapur looks at how conservative policy wonks are struggling to acclimate to the fact that the ACA appears to be here to stay.
Get a chance to be deeply involved in TPM’s 2014 election coverage by helping to run TPM’s PollTracker.
Details after the jump:
Old time TPM writes in …
TPM NAP ROOM? Makes me feel like a grandparent regaling the children about how many miles he used to walk to school, but back when I was a TPM reporter, I worked in a walkup apartment that was overrun with mice, the AC strained to keep you from sweating through your shirt in the summer months, and when I felt a little drowsy, I just asked an intern to slap me across the face. AND WE LIKED IT THAT WAY.
In our institutional defense, the office was only overrun by a single mouse. But when he died in the wall, I’ll admit, that was pretty bad.