This guy just keeps gettin' better and better, dudn't he? He's gonna change us right back to the good ole coat hanger days. Hallelujah.

Link to McClathy article.

Dr. Tiller would be so proud of this moment. Way to go, "Democrats" !

In the end, 19 House Democrats backed the [war funding] bill who had opposed it the first time, although some cited loyalty, not agreement with Obama's plans, as their reason.

"I want to support my president," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who changed her no vote to a yes.

What a great tribute to Dr. Tiller - way to time an announcement, Obama! ABORTION FOE TO LEAD HHS FAITH-BASED OFFICE.

Under George W. Bush, the faith-based centers didn't play a policy role. But Obama has expanded the faith-based project to include a policy side, and one of its chief goals is to reduce the need for abortion...While the administration favors reducing the need for abortion by reducing unintended pregnancies, Kelley has made clear that she seeks instead to reduce access to abortion.

A giant step backward for women - quite a change, and again, not the one we were expecting.

Obama Is Said to Consider Preventive Detention Plan

The things you can find out in the morning news. Who will be on the enemies list to be preventively detained? Will the secret police be sent out in darkness of night to round people up and disappear them? Our government wants to move to Chile circa 1970 and take us with it. It might get a little warm down here.

He was almost ruminating over the need for statutory change to the laws so that we can deal with individuals who we can’t charge and detain,” one participant said. “We’ve known this is on the horizon for many years, but we were able to hold it off with George Bush.

We have two sad stories about the environment today.

1) Congress and by extension the WH administration, water down climate change legislation. Coal, Electric Industries Big Winners in Climate Bill Deal.

Lest we all be accused of Obama Derangement Syndrome, here's a significant good thing.

Obama cancels program for new nuclear warheads

Today we get a really novel approach to explaining why we are having an economic crisis. Think Progress reports that POTUS spoke at a town hall meeting in Missouri today.

Obama then noted that the real fiscal problem facing the United States is the skyrocketing costs of Medicare and Medicaid, not the Recovery Act or bank bailouts, which he said are "one-time charges." "If we aren't careful, health care will consume so much of our budget that ultimately we won't be able to do anything else," he warned.

This.

Posted by Fox News online. I'm thinking there's pretty much of a national consensus at this point. It seems the fringe neocon rightwingnuts and the Village Media are the only ones still defending torture or pretending that there's a rational argument in favor of it.

We United Statesians tend to do things to extremes. So if we're all Texans now, why would Texas bother to seceed? Florida, however, is probably superfluous.

Here's a summary and A Modest Proposal on the economic crisis.

It’s hard to understand it because we’re more accustomed to seeing numbers like that in the world of astrophysics or in Doctor Seuss.

Maybe this crisis will be over within 10 galactic years?

Oh, actually, I guess I'm somehow wrong on that. Their regular staff put out these couple paragraphs of gossipy spin and the headline is sure to be sensational.

Dodd facing fresh political firestorm

Well yes he is, if you're unable to read. The mismatch between the storyline and the full quote in paragraph 6 is purely due to the writer fantasizing that he's gotten, ulp, a scoop! Stop the presses!

At my high school, there was a quote from a member of the student council to the effect that he was voting without consulting his constituents! Egad! Not mentioned in the story is that that's his role as student representative. Oh, right.

Today, we have this from Politico:

Words, or lack thereof, matter. The US no longer holds 'enemy combatants.' Turns out our enemies are human. Who knew? It's good news that the Justice Dept. under new leadership can see that. This is a great way to end the week.

In a break from Bush administration policy, the US will no longer hold terror suspects as "enemy combatants", the Justice Department has announced. Detainees will instead be held according to legal standards set by the international laws of war.

As we have predicted, Republicans will try to continue their disinformation campaign and spin every event to blame government and Democrats - in particular, Obama.

First, Republicans didn't vote for the stimulus package, so as later to pin it's success or failure on Democrats. They have successfully convinced the larger public that they had no input to it. Nevermind all those tax cuts they had put into the bill before it ever reached the floor and the numerous social programs which they prevented from being in the bill in the first place - and as we know, had some removed after it got to the floor (birth control? hah, take some Viagra, that's covered). The media is going along with the story that Republicans had no input into the bill. And now...

President Obama visited the State Dept today, shortly after Secy Clinton had arrived to address the State Dept diplomats, to announce the new Mideast and Afghanistan/Pakistan envoys. I must say it's refreshing to hear adults in charge of the government speaking again. (And given the circumstances, Pres Obama skipped the preacher cadence during his talk entirely. Can we hope that inflection is gone for good from him?)

In reports on this announcement, I'm not seeing much emphasis on what I thought I heard as the most significant part of Obama's speech today at the State Dept.

Here's a link to a video of the 2nd half of the speech.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7tIpcNmABw

Listen carefully at 0:46 and beyond. He says:

I call your attention to this article, which speaks for itself.