Susan Collins wants you to know that she does NOT support a public option trigger:

A key swing vote on healthcare reform said Sunday she would not support a public option "trigger" -- a series of benchmarks that, if not met by a certain time, would authorize the creation of a government insurance program.

"No -- the problem with triggers is that is just delays the public option," Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told CNN's "State of the Union," adding that her major qualm with the public option was its scope and cost.

Isn't it great that Portland Press Herald and Bangor Daily News asked Sen. Collins so many probing, substantive questions about her bottom line during the stimulus bill debate?

Small controversy forms around Collins, the stimulus and the swine flu pandemic

Collins: I Stand By Flu Funds Cut

Collins cut funding for pandemic flu preparedness

This post is for the benefit of Sen. Collins and Nelson. While you are fiddling, your states are burning.

Maine lawmakers eye Washington for budget help Good luck with that.

Millinocket Mill Layoffs

Katahdin Paper plan will affect at least 140

Furloughs proposed for UMS

City offers workers buyouts but no details on why

Collins was one of four votes preventing restoring habeas corpus.

And to add insult to injury:

CNN:

Americans may need passports to board domestic flights or to picnic in a national park next year if they live in one of the states defying the federal Real ID Act.

The act, signed in 2005 as part of an emergency military spending and tsunami relief bill, aims to weave driver's licenses and state ID cards into a sort of ["sort of"???] national identification system by May 2008. The law sets baseline criteria for how driver's licenses will be issued and what information they must contain.

The Real ID Act repealed a provision in the 9/11 Commission Implementation Act calling for state and federal officials to examine security standards for driver's licenses.

It called instead for states to begin issuing new federal licenses, lasting no longer than eight years, by May 11, 2008, unless they are granted an extension.

Online Wall Street Journal:

Sens. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Susan Collins of Maine are mixing it up at the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

For future hearings, Democrats and Republicans won’t sit on opposite sides of the dais but rather, next to each other — alternating Democrat, Republican, Democrat, Republican etc.

In a joint statement , Chairman Lieberman, an independent, and ranking Republican Collins, said “In the last election, the voters said they were sick of the partisanship that produces gridlock… So, as a start, instead of sitting on opposite sides of the room like a house divided, we want the American people to see us sitting side by side as our committee members work together make our nation more secure and our government more efficient.”

They credited Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.) a new committee member, with hatching the idea.

['Scuse me a minute--Somebody said Bipartisan. There. That's better.]

"Let's all sit in a circle!"

Pairs with Maine Girl Susan Collins (R-Protorture) in yet another Bipartisan wankfest:

There's a call for a new congressional advisory group to help forge a new direction for the U-S in Iraq.
Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins want it to be made up of the bipartisan leadership of the five Senate panels that deal with national security.

They say the group would meet regularly to discuss the latest developments in Iraq while formulating recommendations for the president.

Collins says those leaders have never gotten together and used their expertise to discuss such an issue.

She says such a get-together would offer the opportunity for "a much freer exchange of ideas" on a critical issue.

I quote the story in its entirety, so its complete vacuity is all the more evident: