Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up for July 21, 2010, Daily Kos, July 21, 2010, by DemFromCT, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

Wednesday (and a little Tuesday) punditry.

Nate Silver:

The usual rule of thumb is that publicly-released internal polls have a lean of about 5 points, so that if her campaign released a poll showing Lincoln down by 9 points, that means she’s really down by 14. But sometimes the bias in an internal poll is considerably more than 5 points, depending on the pollster, the candidate, and the circumstances of the race. In this case, the Lincoln campaign seems desperate to fend off the narrative that her campaign is dead in the water and doesn’t deserve fundraising or activist attention, and so the incentive to put out a favorable poll might be especially strong.

They’re desperate to fight off this narrative because it’s absolutely true. In a cycle where we have so many authentically competitive Senate races, it would be absurd for national Democrats to spend more than a pittance on her.

Mary Brown, David Willis and Arthur Jaffe:

In March, America made history by passing the Affordable Care Act. As the summer heats up, so does the ongoing debate around the country about what the new health reform law actually means for all Americans.

Not everyone is convinced that the law is good for the country. But there is one constituency group that clearly came out as winners in the fight, one group that — although literally necessary for the future survival of our country — can’t speak up for itself and often is ignored. They are our nation’s most important, yet most vulnerable resource: our children.

Chris Cillizza:

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R) announcement that he will vote in favor of Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court is likely to further incite conservatives already unhappy with him and, according to close observers of the state’s politics, ensures he will face a serious primary challenge in 2014.

“I think there’s a good reason for a conservative to vote yes,” Graham said this morning.

Graham’s apostasy on Kagan comes after other high profile breaks with conservatives in his state (and nationally) over climate change and immigration reform and will likely make him a central target of those tea party Republicans who helped oust Utah Sen. Bob Bennett in his bid for renomination earlier this year.

Bennett had to get through a caucus, very different than a primary, it’s not like his is the 60th vote and 2014 is a long way away. But teabaggers like to make loud noises.

LA Times:

A third Los Angeles County infant has died of whooping cough, public health officials announced Tuesday.

The confirmation of the death — the sixth pertussis-related death this year in the state — comes a day after the California Department of Public Health expanded criteria for those who should be vaccinated against the highly contagious disease amid what is shaping up to be the worst outbreak in 50 years.

Vaccines save lives, a topic I’m discussing at Netroots Nation on Thursday morning.

Eugene Robinson:

That was quick. We now have proof the NAACP was right.

When the nation’s leading civil rights organization passed a resolution condemning displays of racism by Tea Party activists, leaders of the movement reacted with umbrage so thick you could cut it with a knife — then demonstrated that the NAACP’s allegation was entirely justified…

And if the Republican Party is going to try to harness the Tea Party’s passion on behalf of GOP candidates, responsible leaders need to make clear that racism will not be tolerated. Yet Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declined to talk about the NAACP flap when asked about it Sunday, and Sen. John Cornyn volunteered that accusing the Tea Party of racism is “slanderous.”

It’s not slander if it’s the truth, senator. No one can deny that some fraction of the Tea Party’s considerable energy is generated by racism. Excommunicating Mark Williams was a start to disowning and discarding this element — but just a start.

Michael Lind:

The recent reforms in healthcare and financial regulation are too market-oriented for most liberals and too utility-oriented for most free-market conservatives. But this does not imply that each side is equally dogmatic. The center-left is much more flexible and open-minded.

For example, when the conditions that made a sector suitable for treatment as a utility change, liberals do not necessarily object to deregulation. As long as telephony was based on wires, regulated telephone monopolies like AT&T made sense. When technology, in the form of wireless telephony, made a competitive market in that industry possible, few liberals objected to deregulation.

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DemFromCT is a longtime member of the Daily Kos community with interests ranging from polling to Iraq to bird flu, and has graciously agreed to allow us here at Evans Liberal Politics to publish his articles on an ongoing basis. He is a founding editor of Flu Wiki (www.fluwikie.com) and its sister site, the Flu Wiki Forum (www.newfluwiki2.com). Since its inception in June 2005, Flu Wiki has grown into an international clearinghouse of pandemic influenza information and links.

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Elena Kagan Is Obama’s Supreme Court Pick, The Huffington Post, May 10, 2010, by Mike Allen and HuffPo, photo from Wikimedia Commons, excerpts quoted verbatim, commentary by Evans Liberal Politics owner Paul Evans:

President Obama is expected to nominate Solicitor General and former Harvard Law dean Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court on Monday, Mike Allen reports (Politico, quote on Huffington Post).

Kagan has long considered the frontrunner to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, even as questions have emerged about the limited public record of her legal opinions and how she compares ideologically to Stevens, a Gerald Ford appointee who has nonetheless been the high court’s flagship liberal justice for decades. President Obama seems to have few doubts, however, Allen reports.

From Mike Allen on Politico:

WHAT ALLIES WILL SAY: Kagan has a lifetime of public service stemming from the values her parents (mom a public school teacher, dad a lawyer who fought for tenants against big landlords). She’s exceptionally capable at building coalitions and bringing people together — an effective counterweight to Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia, and could help bring swing Justice Kennedy into coalitions. She’s a trailblazer – the first woman dean of Harvard Law School, and first woman Solicitor General. Not just another appellate judge – outside “the “judicial monastery.” Gets along with Justice Scalia in social settings, and has a nice banter with him during arguments. These two will be big: 1) As a Clinton Justice Department official, she worked with Sen. John McCain in negotiating anti-tobacco legislation. 2) In her current job, she argued the administration side in Citizens United, the decision that opened campaigns to more corporate funding. Even though she lost, Dems will argue during her confirmation hearing that the Roberts court is rolling back rights, benefiting corporate interests.

WHAT CRITICS WILL SAY: She has no judicial experience — not a day in a robe. While Kagan can be expected to follow the lead of many of Obama’s judicial nominees and disavow her record of liberal activism, her record shows that she can become emotionally involved on issues she deeply cares about and there is nothing in her record to suggest she has the proper temperament to be a judge. When Kagan was dean of Harvard Law School, she was a tireless advocate for the university’s decision to ban military recruiters from the school’s campus because of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Her record is one of an advocate and an activist, not of a fair-minded, impartial judge. President Obama and Kagan are going to be asking Americans to take her at her word in the hearings, ignoring her previous writings and advocacy efforts. The irony is that Obama’s biggest problems might come from his left. Several liberal scholars have come out aggressively against Kagan for her support of providing law enforcement, intelligence and military officials the tools necessary to effectively fight the war on terror.

Commentary by Evans Liberal Politics owner Paul Evans: Kagan, besides having been dean of Harvard Law School, is currently Solicitor General of the U.S., arguing in defense of Congress’ laws before the high court for the United States. She was confirmed in that role on March 19, 2009. The main point of controversy for Kagan, besides being the first Supreme Court nominee in 40 years with no judicial experience, is her rather notorious stand for gay rights while at Harvard Law School. The New York Times reports that:

Activists on the right have attacked her for briefly barring military recruiters from a campus facility because the ban on openly gay men and lesbians serving in the military violated the school’s anti-discrimination policy.

Replacing Justice Stevens with Ms. Kagan presumably would not alter the broad ideological balance on the court, but her relative youth (Kagan is 50) means that she could have an influence on the court for decades to come, underscoring the stakes involved.

In making his second nomination in as many years, Mr. Obama was not looking for a liberal firebrand as much as a persuasive leader who could attract the swing vote of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and counter what the president sees as the rightward direction of the court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

The Republicans are not in the greatest shape to attack Kagan on her pro-gay stance, because of the recent flap over Family Research Council co-founder and NARTH activist George Rekers and his Rent Boy scandal. Moreover, in Congress these days, there’s far more vocal denunciation of homosexuality than Republican’s personal feelings (and sometimes lifestyle) actually reflect. If the pro-gay rap is the worst Republicans can come up with against Kagan, then she probably faces pretty easy sailing through the confirmation process.

As the Times reports, though, the lack of judicial experience makes Kagan something of a wild card:

That lack of time on the bench may both help and hurt her confirmation prospects, allowing critics to question whether she is truly qualified while denying them a lengthy judicial paper trail filled with ammunition for attacks. As solicitor general, Ms. Kagan has represented the government before the Supreme Court for the past year, but her own views are to a large extent a matter of supposition.

Perhaps as a result, some on both sides of the ideological aisle are suspicious of her. Liberals dislike her support for strong executive power and her outreach to conservatives while running the law school.

There are some indications that at least some Republicans don’t mind Elena Kagan much at all. See Lindsey Graham: ‘I Like’ Elena Kagan, Which Might Hurt Her Chances, The Huffington Post, April 13, 2010, by Sam Stein. Apparently both Lindsey Graham and Orin Hatch both like Kagan:

“I like her,” the South Carolina Republican said of Elena Kagan, the former Harvard Law School dean and current Solicitor General. “I liked her [during her solicitor general confirmation hearings]. I liked her answers.”

Graham, who spoke to reporters on Capitol Hill, was referring to Kagan’s positions on executive power, which she regards as relatively broad in scope. It’s a position that already has civil libertarian groups skittish about the prospects for her ascending to the Supreme Court. And, in that sense, Graham recognized that an endorsement by a Republican Senator of her viewpoints could rankle this crowd even further.

Asked whether his comments in support of Kagan might actually hurt her prospects for being chosen by Obama, the Senator flashed a smile.

“I like her,” he clarified. “It doesn’t mean I’m going to vote for her. I believe she’s liberal if that helps. I think she is a solid liberal person. Any nominee would be liberal… To suggest [Obama] wouldn’t nominate a liberal would be breathtaking considering everything else he’s done and who he is. But elections matter.”

In making his remarks, Graham becomes at least the second Senate Republican to speak highly of Kagan’s capacity for the bench. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), last May, called Kagan brilliant and someone who would cause difficult(y) for Republicans should she be nominated (Obama would chose Sotomayor instead).

See also, Kagan, Gays, and the Bogus Right Wing Ideas Factory, The Huffington Post, April 19, 2010, by Nathaniel Frank:

As usual, the belief that a person in power could be either a lesbian or sympathetic to lesbian and gay rights has conservatives fuming. And part of the reason is they feel constrained in their ability to say, in polite company, that they dislike gay people and wish to block their rights even when doing so creates unnecessary human suffering. So they use thinly veiled code phrases that sidestep their real angst. Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council, for instance, called granting hospital visitation rights to gay partners a case of “pandering to a radical special interest group” because he is too cowardly to admit that his peculiar practice of Christianity would have him leave gay people to die alone. And in yesterday’s Washington Post, Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center accused Kagan of using “strikingly extreme rhetoric” simply for calling the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy “a moral injustice of the first order.”

If conservatives are willing to let the gay rights issue alone, Kagan should face pretty smooth sailing, although one can expect that progressives may well be displeased that Kagna is so pro-executive branch. Yet for Obama, this nomination fits right in with his administration, which has to a large extent continued the Bush administration policies which strengthen executive branch powers, to the chagrin of some liberals. I wondered if Judge Diane P. Wood might get tapped, but in the end her beliefs were probably too pro-everyman to really fit in with the corporatist, pro-establishment Obama administration. Let’s face it folks, Obama has not exactly instituted policies which benefit the lower and middle classes all that much, and we shouldn’t expect his Supreme Court pick to be anything but fully consonant in these sorts of “coddle the rich” sorts of policies, either. Kagan has consistently backed the administration in police and national security matters, insofar as she has a documented record as Solicitor General. This despite the fact that at Princeton, she wrote a senior thesis under historian Sean Wilentz titled “To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933.” Call it a youthful indiscretion. (See Myths and falsehoods about Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court nomination, Media Matters for America, May 10, 2010, by Media Matters staff.)

As to the business about gay rights in the military, serving as the basis for a semester-long ban to military recruiters while at Harvard, Media Matters reports that “Kagan pledged to defend Solomon Amendment (providing recruiters access to college campuses) as solicitor general despite her personal views,” and so might be considered even in matters of personal strong opinions to be something of a strict constructionist, following precedent. How much of an issue the pro-gay rights personal stance which Kagan holds remains to be seen, yet should be somewhat diminished by this fact.

These two distinctions (being pro-establishment and pro-executive branch) are in force in any decision between Elena Kagan and Diane Wood. But then, any person rising to a high position in government these days has to “fit in” with the establishment of they wouldn’t be where they are. At least Kagan did a creditable job in Citizens United and she has the “right sort” of parents to be considered not of the elite. However, the progressive legal scholar Jonathan Turley (see video, below) feels that she is to the right of Justice Stevens in matters of privacy and freedom of speech. But she has no trail of legal opinions which can be attacked. Because of that, some Republicans shouldn’t have too much difficulty supporting Elena Kagan, despite the temptation to excite the base prior to this fall’s elections.

UPDATE: Obama announced Kagan’s nomination Monday at 10:00 a.m. (see video below).

UPDATE: See, Isn’t This a Bit Much?, The Volokh Conspiracy, May 10, 2010, by David Bernstein, excerpt quoted verbatim:

I know that Harvard and Yale attract a disproportionate percentage of America’s talented youth, but still, isn’t this a bit much? Are there no similarly talented individuals who attended other Ivy League schools, other private universities or (gasp!) even state law schools?

UPDATE: See, What the Elena Kagan pick says about President Obama, Politico, May 10, 2010, by Glenn Thrush.

UPDATE: See, Why Elena Kagan won’t be the next Harriet Miers, Salon, May 10, 2010, by Mike Madden:

Liberals grumble about Kagan’s lack of a record, but the White House made the safe pick for a reason — it’s safe.

….

What really bothers liberals (who weren’t very interested in discussing this on the record on the day the pick was announced) is that Obama probably could have gotten someone who was more openly progressive confirmed. Democrats hold 59 seats in the Senate, but after November, they’re virtually certain to have fewer. Kagan, though, has enough support from Republicans that she could probably have gotten on the court even after the elections. The liberal argument boils down to this: Instead of making a bold, assertive choice, the White House went the safe route and asked the left to trust them. (Which it didn’t even do all that aggressively; Vice President Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, asserted that Kagan is “clearly a progressive,” but also called her a pragmatic, and didn’t really provide much evidence of her progressive ways.)

Still, that hardly makes Kagan the next Miers. There’s no question of her basic proficiency for the job — she’s been serving as solicitor general of the United States since Obama took office, and argued six cases before the court while she was there. She helped shape the administration’s entire line of reasoning on questions of constitutional issues. Unlike Miers, who spent her private career litigating, Kagan taught constitutional law and had previously been nominated to an appellate court by former President Bill Clinton; had Republicans not blocked her way, she would have been there for years by now.

Republicans blocked the nomination of Kagan by Clinton? That in itself is encouraging to me.

UPDATE: See, Obama’s natural choice of Kagan, Salon, May 10, 2010, by Glenn Greenwald.

It’s anything but surprising that President Obama has chosen Elena Kagan to replace John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court. Nothing is a better fit for this White House than a blank slate, institution-loyal, seemingly principle-free careerist who spent the last 15 months as the Obama administration’s lawyer vigorously defending every one of his assertions of extremely broad executive authority. The Obama administration is filled to the brim with exactly such individuals — as is reflected by its actions and policies — and this is just one more to add to the pile. The fact that she’ll be replacing someone like John Paul Stevens and likely sitting on the Supreme Court for the next three decades or so makes it much more consequential than most, but it is not a departure from the standard Obama approach.

The New York Times this morning reports that “Mr. Obama effectively framed the choice so that he could seemingly take the middle road by picking Ms. Kagan, who correctly or not was viewed as ideologically between Judge Wood on the left and Judge Garland in the center.” That’s consummate Barack Obama.

Highly Recommended: The Problem With Elena Kagan Is Barack Obama, Daily Kos, May 10, 2010, by Cenk Uygur:

My problem with her is my problem with Obama. Cheney and Bush moved the ball 80 yards down-field, whether that was on executive power, warrantless wiretapping, pre-emptive wars or just about any other issue you can think of. And Obama’s bold and brilliant response is to move the ball 10 yards in the opposite direction. Not good enough. Not remotely good enough.

….

Elena Kagan – safe, no record, never challenged power in any meaningful way, never stood up for progressive ideology, beloved by the establishment in Washington – the perfect Obama candidate. I’m tired of it. The ball is down against our own goal line and the guy thinks he just scored a touchdown.

He is never going to throw the ball down the field. If you like two yard pick-ups by a running-back going straight up the middle, you’ll love Obama. It’s the Eddie George presidency. What he doesn’t seem to get is that the other side is eventually going to get the ball back and then it won’t seem like a major accomplishment that we went from our own two-yard line to our own twelve-yard line. It’ll be viewed as a tremendous disappointment.

See President Obama will name Elena Kagan as Supreme Court pick, Politico, May 10, 2010, by Josh Gerstein.

This appointment is all about politics. White House and Democratic strategists have been concerned about the prospects for a bruising confirmation fight just before the November midterm elections. There is an enthusiasm gap with Republican versus Democrat voters which bodes poorly for the fall elections. In recent weeks this gap has shrunk from 19 points in early April to only 10 points currently. According to this source, “Gallup states that if the elections were hypothetically held today the voting preference would be a 45% tie,” so that an enthusiasm gap is not necessarily decisive in projected voting.

Even so, Democratic theorists have long dreaded a bruising confirmation fight which would take place if a “true liberal” — someone to the left of, say, Sonia Sotomayor — were nominated to fill Justice Stevens SCOTUS seat. Rachel Maddow tonight on MSNBC stated that at least one Republican power orgnanization is advocating delaying the nomination, whoever was nominated, beyond the August recess or to delay it till as close to the election as possible.

Therefore, it was almost inevitable that the nominee would be someone “safe”, and unlikely to bring the kind of confirmation fight that could result in a united Republican opposition. Only a few Republican Senators, such as Graham or Hatch (or Snowe, who voted for Kagan’s confirmations as Solicitor General) are needed to avert a prospective filibuster during the confirmation hearing. In Democratic circles, the main thing is to avoid igniting the Republican base just before the fall elections. Elena Kagan is such a “safe” choice.

And (let’s make it official), let me be the first to echo the former Redskin’s quarterback Joe Theisman and welcome Ms. Kagan to the rarefied world of power politics by simply saying: “lighten up Elena baby!” ~ Paul Evans

UPDATE: See Nomination of Kagan Leaves Some Longing on the Left, The New York Times, May 10, 2010, by Peter Baker.

See the SCOTUS Blog article 9,750 Words on Elena Kagan, which has many links and resources.

Watch the CSPAN video on Kagan’s Solicitor General Confirmation Hearing from February 9, 2009 — 2 hours, 6 minutes.

Watch CBS News press conference with Senator Patrick Leahy on the nomination here.

Read the announcement on the White House blog.

Click here to watch the full speech video on CSPAN. Click here to see the transcript text.

Watch Elena Kagan thank the President for the nomiation.

Criticism from the right: Watch Sessions: Unacceptable That Kagan Banned Military Recruiters From Harvard, CNN on YouTube – 1:59.

Elena Kagan Nominated To US Supreme Court

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Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up, Daily Kos, May 6, 2010, by DemFromCT, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

Gail Collins:

“I think you’re going too far here,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday. He was speaking in opposition to a bill that would keep people on the F.B.I. terrorist watch list from buying guns and explosives.

Say what?

Yes, if you are on the terrorist watch list, the authorities can keep you from getting on a plane but not from purchasing an AK-47. This makes sense to Congress because, as Graham accurately pointed out, “when the founders sat down and wrote the Constitution, they didn’t consider flying.”

Nate Silver:

Polling during the past 48 hours has tended to show very slight gains for the Conservatives and Labour at the expense of the Liberal Democrats. Our projection model now forecasts that Conservatives will have 312 seats in the House of Commons (up from 308 in our previous forecast), Labour 204 (up from 198) and Liberal Democrats, 103 (down from 113).

Kaiser Health News:

Politico reports that several goals of Republicans — including the repeal of the health care law — “put them at odds with the majority of voters, according to a new survey by Resurgent Republic,” a nonprofit polling and research group established by “GOP operative” Ed Gillespie to assist conservatives and Republicans. “The findings, unveiled at a Tuesday morning panel by the group, highlight a major challenge faced by Republicans headed into the 2010 election cycle: While their base appears more motivated than that of the Democrats, they will have to find ways to address hot-button issues like healthcare, immigration and climate change that do not alienate critical independent and swing voters.”

And even the enthusiasm gap is shrinking.

Republican registered voters’ enthusiasm about voting in this year’s midterm elections has declined significantly in recent weeks. As a result, Republicans’ advantage over Democrats on this measure has shrunk from 19 points in early April to 10 points in the latest weekly aggregate.

David Brown

Most [doctors] are in practices with five or fewer other physicians. They keep their records on paper in longhand. When they need to consult a colleague, they reach for the telephone. They bill for each visit. They have little idea about how their skills compare to those of fellow practitioners, nor do most know what their patients really think about the care they give.

The new health-care law aims to change most of that.

Fifty years from now, it is likely that almost all doctors will be members of teams that include case managers, social workers, dietitians, telephone counselors, data crunchers, guideline instructors, performance evaluators and external reviewers. They will be parts of organizations (which either employ them or contract with them) that are responsible for patients in and out of the hospital, in sickness and in health, over decades.

The records of what they do for a patient — and what every other doctor does — will be in electronic form, accessible from any computer. Software will gently remind them what to consider as they treat, and try to prevent, diseases. How the patients fare will be measured and publicized, and used in part to judge practitioners’ performance. At the same time, the health-care organizations, aided by the government, will make an effort to let caregivers know the “best practices” they’re expected to follow.

David Biespiel (poet and writer):

“…consider the balkanized world of American poetry. Like Americans everywhere, America’s poets have turned insular and clustered in communities of aesthetic sameness, communicating only among those with similar literary heroes, beliefs, values, and poetics. Enter any regional poetry scene in any American metropolis or college town, and you will find the same cliquey village mentality with the same stylistic breakdowns. Over here you have the post-avant prose poets, over there the kitchen-sink confessionalists, and across the road are the shiny formalists—and no one ever breaks bread together. As with politics, where you have “I’m voting for That One” liberals and “Time for a Tea Party” conservatives, poetry has evolved into a self-selected enclave, and also—exactly like other sectors of American life—it has stratified into enclaves within enclaves that are hyper-specific and self-referential.

“Such inclination toward stratification—whether it’s exemplified by the world of poetry or something else—is more than just an example of demographic sorting. It’s a modern American phenomenon that ultimately corrodes both self and society. Whether it’s in poetry or politics, self-exclusion catalyzes isolation and diminishes shared connections. In its more partisan forms, it impedes cooperation and contributes to a chronic inability to find common ground—whether it’s literary or political ground. Making fine distinctions in art, aesthetics, poetry, and politics matters, but honest discourse is about bridging differences, not just defending one’s side, something you rarely see in poetry’s rudimentary or even iconic debates—or, for that matter, in the country’s political ones. More, when you look at a fringe art like poetry in light of this civic gleaning, you quickly conclude that the capacity for poets to connect to audiences from more than some micro-segment of American life is fatally imperiled. Unless something gives, the fractures will just keep fracturing.”

Whether it’s music, experimental theatre, poetry or politics, if your audience becomes too small, we all lose something. David also posts political commentary at the Arena.

Speaking of the Arena, Greg Dworkin (that’s me):

Joe Lieberman hasn’t contributed much of anything useful to the national dialog since he lost the vice presidency in 2000, and he hasn’t added to his record with a proposal to strip citizens of their citizenship by presidential fiat. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican in the White House – absolute power will lead to abuse of power. This is a really bad idea that shouldn’t go any further than castigating Lieberman for suggesting it.

Now, if Lieberman wants to rehab himself, he should spend more time with John Kerry and Lindsay Graham working on those energy proposals. That actually shows some promise, though my faith in Lieberman to follow through in a productive way is just about out of gas. But hey, show me wrong, Joe. Do something useful.

Also see, David Obey won’t seek reelection, Politico, May 5, 2010, by David Rogers.

Morning Juice: Cheers and Jeers, Daily Kos, May 6, 2010, by Bill in Portland Maine, which has the full conversation from alleged emails between Family Research Council co-founder and his Rentboy.com young male prostitute hire. Juicy.

Watch Tom Friedman on Greece, BP and Terror, ABC news video, May 6, 2010 – 4:48.

See Trying to shirk responsibility for spill, BP CEO predicts ‘lots of illegitimate’ lawsuits because ‘this is America.’, Think Progress, May 6, 2010, by Alex Seitz-Wald, excerpt quoted verbatim:

BP is financially responsible for the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, so it is desperately trying the limit the financial and legal fall out. The company tried to buy off coastal residents and local fishermen hired to help clean up the mess with payments and jobs in exchange for signing a waiver promising not to sue. Alabama’s attorney general and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano both decried the waivers and asked BP to stop circulating them, prompting the company to admit it had made a “misstep.” The company has vowed to pay all “legitimate” legal claims from residents or businesses who suffer from the disaster, but BP CEO Tony Hayward insultingly told the Times of London yesterday that because “this is America,” many of the claims will be “illegitimate”.

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DemFromCT is a longtime member of the Daily Kos community with interests ranging from polling to Iraq to bird flu, and has graciously agreed to allow us here at Evans Liberal Politics to publish his articles on an ongoing basis. He is a founding editor of Flu Wiki (www.fluwikie.com) and its sister site, the Flu Wiki Forum (www.newfluwiki2.com). Since its inception in June 2005, Flu Wiki has grown into an international clearinghouse of pandemic influenza information and links.

You can view his diaries at Daily Kos, here. DemFromCT is a featured writer at Daily Kos, and you can read more about him here. You are invited to email DemFromCT.

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Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) declared on Sunday that the health care legislation passed by the House of Representatives would be “dead on arrival” in the Senate, in part because his friend and colleague, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), wouldn’t go “anywhere near” it. (Joe, “the traitor” Lieberman — strip the SOB of his committees now!)

“The House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate,” Graham told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “Just look at how it passed. It passed 220 to 215. It passed by two votes. You had 39 Democrats vote against the bill. They come from red states, moderate Democrats from swing districts. They bailed out on this bill. It was bill written by liberals for liberals and people like [Sen.] Joe Lieberman are not going to get anywhere near the House bill… it is a non-starter in the Senate.”

Read the full article, here.

See The Senate, Not the House, Is the Name of the Game on Health Care Reform, The Huffington Post, November 8, 2009, by Earl Ofari Hutchinson.

See Not so fast: House health care vote is just the first step, McClatchy Newspapers, November 8, 2009, by David Lightman.

See **SLAP**SLAP **SLAP**, Daily Kos, November 8, 2009, by LaFeminista: