By Jeremy Herb

The amount of campaign contributions this year is already breaking records for off-year election cycles, with House and Senate candidates raising more than $250 million the first half of 2009. Despite the economic climate, supercharged debates over issues like health care have prompted a downpour of campaign funds (like the $1.7 million that rained on S.C. Rep. Joe Wilson after he shouted "You lie!" at the president). But Wilson isn't the only benefactor of the health reform debate. Several senators are happy new recipients of the health industry's campaign cash.

After weeks of railing against the price tag of health-care reform, Senate Republicans managed to bond over pumping up the budget for one aspect of health-care reform yesterday: abstinence-only education. Proposed by Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the amendment reinstates $50 million in funding for abstinence-only education that President Obama had previously removed in his budget proposal earlier this year. Committee Republicans were joined by Democrats Blanche Lincoln and Kent Conrad in voting up the measure, which passed 12-11.

I've been trying to think of a measured way to riff on this, but instead I'll be frank. It's an absolute waste of money. This is the sort of thing Republicans usually wail about—the federal government propping up a program where there is no evidence that said program works. Indeed, there's a mounting body of evidence that abstinence-only education is a categorical failure. Just this past Sunday, the Austin American Statesman reported that school districts in Texas are abandoning abstinence-only education. "More government money has been spent on the cause of sexual abstinence in Texas than any other state, but it still has the third-highest teen birthrate in the country and the highest percentage of teen mothers giving birth more than once," the Statesman reports. Many of the schools are shifting to so-called "abstinence-plus" programs, which teach abstinence within a comprehensive sex-education program.

The Kaiser Family Foundation has today released the results of its latest poll tracking public opinion on health-care reform. Similar to the polls I wrote about last week, Kaiser has found an uptick in support since a low point in August. The percentage of people wanting "health-care reform now" is up 4 points to 57 percent, and the proportion of people who believe the country will be better off with reform has jumped 8 points to 53 percent. People who believe the country will be worse off under health-care reform is now down 8 points to 26 percent, and individuals believing that they or their family will be worse off is down 8 points to 23 percent. That last number is the critical one for Obama: people must believe his reforms won't hurt them personally if they are to support health reform.

According to the Kaiser poll, the most popular component of health-insurance reform is the insurance-industry regulations that would prevent insurers from dropping or denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions. Surprisingly, 59 percent of respondents supported a tax on so-called Cadillac or high-end plans. Seniors remain the most skeptical demographic, but 55 percent admitted to being "confused" about the outcome of the legislation.

Five Senate Democrats sounded the death knell for Jay Rockefeller's public-option amendment in the Finance Committee today. Rockefeller's amendment was voted down 15-8. Joining all the GOP members in voting against the amendment were committee chairman Max Baucus (Montana), Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas), Bill Nelson (Florida), Kent Conrad (North Dakota), and Tom Carper (Delaware). Those names shouldn't come as a surprise. They're all moderate or conservative Democrats. Lincoln is facing a tough reelection in a conservative state next year, Montana and North Dakota are red states, and Florida has a large number of senior voters who are the demographic most opposed to health-care reform. According to the Huffington Post's Ryan Grim, Baucus said that Rockefeller's amendment would have caused the bill to fail on the Senate floor. "I fear if this provision is in the bill, it will hold back meaningful reform this year," Baucus said, according to CNN. The committee then voted on a similar, if slightly less liberal, amendment offered by Chuck Schumer of New York. It was shot down 13-10 with two Democrats, Nelson and Carper, switching their positions.

Prospects for a public option aren't entirely dead. There's still the possibility of a public-option trigger that Olympia Snowe, who voted against Rockerfeller today, has expressed support for. It has yet to be discussed by the Finance Committee.

The White House announced today that Barack Obama was dispatching the nation's most powerful messenger to make the final pitch for Chicago's 2016 Olympics bid - himself. He'll be joining a star-studded bid team - the White House had previously advised that the First Lady and Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett, another Chicago native, would be heading up the charge. The first couple will each make a presentation about why Chicago is best placed to host the celebrated games and to "celebrate the ideals of the Olympic movement", according to the White House press release.

By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball  

A major Senate probe of the CIA's interrogation and detention practices was seriously derailed Friday when Sen. Kit Bond, the ranking GOP member of the Senate intelligence committee, revealed in a statement that he had pulled the entire GOP staff out of the investigation. Bond blames the move on Attorney General Eric Holder's recent decision to launch a separate criminal inquiry into the agency's abuse of detainees. The move appears to be part of a broader campaign by congressional Republicans and the U.S. intelligence community to pressure Holder to rescind his recent appointment of a special counsel to investigate allegations of torture during the Bush administration.

Bond contends that the intelligence-committee investigation had effectively become pointless, and the panel was "spinning our wheels" because current and former agency officials will now refuse to cooperate with any congressional probe when they face potential prosecution by the Justice Department. "DOJ sent a loud and clear message that previous decisions to decline prosecution mean nothing, and old criminal charges can be brought any time against anyone," Bond said. "Against these odds, what current or former CIA employee would be willing to gamble his freedom by answering the committee's questions?"

But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the committee's Democratic chairman, insisted the probe will continue regardless. Saying "I very much regret" the GOP's decision, Feinstein added that her probe "is being pursued, additional staff are being hired, and the committee is continuing the work with all due diligence."

UPDATE, 8:30 PM: After getting complaints from Congress─and an inquiry from NEWSWEEK─the State Department backed away Thursday from awarding foreign-aid funds to two foundations headed by the children of Libyan dictator Muammar Kaddafi.

A senior State Department official said that department officials were "reworking" a $2.5 million foreign-aid earmark for Libya that, according to a memo to Congress sent last week and reported by NEWSWEEK on Thursday afternoon, was to include $400,0000 for two foundations─one headed by Kaddafi's son Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, and another headed by his daughter. The State official said the funds were to be used for "democracy and governance" programs in Libya and explained the initial designations for the two Kaddafi-related organizations by saying in an e-mail: "In Libya, there are no independent NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], so we are somewhat limited in terms of our civil outreach." However, the official added, the funds have not actually been obligated, and "we will listen to our appropriators and make adjustments as necessary." All of this is further evidence that Kaddafi─who for the past few years has been avidly cultivated by officials in the Bush and Obama administrations─is becoming increasingly toxic.

ORIGINAL STORY:

I have a story out today about the uphill battle that Barbara Boxer and John Kerry will face when they drop their climate change bill in the Senate, which is likely to be any day now. The short version is that the politics are very complex and negotiations are likely to be drawn out. We probably won't see a vote on it this year. One political aspect I didn't discuss in the piece is public opinion, mostly because that's a whole different can of worms. Perhaps unsurprisingly, what the public thinks about climate change legislation like the Waxman-Markey bill depends almost entirely on messaging. Two recent polls show how disparate responses can be.

On September 1, the Benenson Strategy Group - those same polling gurus who advised the Obama campaign - wrote a memo explaining that, based on their polling, 63% of Americans support the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES, or the Waxman-Markey Bill.) Support peaked among Democrats, 85% of whom were in favor of it, but it also polled well among Independents (59% support) and did better than expected among Republicans (43% support). But just days earlier, Rasmussen conducted a separate poll and found only 35% of Americans support ACES. So why the enormous difference?

Yesterday, Public Policy Polling released results of a poll showing that 42 percent of Republicans nationwide do not believe Barack Obama was born in the United States. This sort of statistic has become old news by now. Despite overwhelming evidence that the president was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born citizen, a core of Americans remain convinced he was born overseas.

But with pollsters frantically trying to get in on the birther action, has anyone stopped to ask whether Sen. John McCain was born in the United States? McCain was actually born in Panama, but is considered a natural-born citizen, since he was born to an American military family stationed on a U.S. base. And, except for perhaps a small fringe, no one has questioned whether he would have been constitutionally qualified to be president. 

We've poked around a bit and been unable to find any professional poll that asked Americans whether they believed McCain was born in the U.S. The fact that he was physically born outside the U.S. should have had no bearing on his own legitimacy, real or perceived, had he been elected president. But it would be interesting to see how many of the people who believe, incorrectly, that Obama was born outside the U.S. realize that McCain actually was not. 

Federal authorities have accused Afghan-American terror suspect Najibullah Zazi of purchasing chemicals and equipment used to make homemade explosives, the same materials used in the 2005 bombings of London's subway and bus system, according to court documents made public on Thursday.

But, NEWSWEEK has learned, investigators have not yet recovered all the explosives components they accuse Zazi of purchasing. Two counterterrorism officials close to the investigation said recovery of the materials was part of the "ongoing investigation." NEWSWEEK reported earlier this week that investigators were looking for a possible bomb factory or cache of explosives-related materials as part of an investigation in Queens, N.Y., and the Denver area.

Now that we've had three successive administrations name a female secretary of state, it doesn't seem like a big deal anymore. But Madeleine Albright was a novelty when she took the position in 1997, and how she used her gender to advantage is the subtext to her new book, "Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat's Jewel Box." The book launches next week together with an exhibition of pins at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

Albright credits Saddam Hussein with the inspiration to use pins as a diplomatic tool after calling her a serpent when she was UN ambassador. She promptly donned a snake pin. When the Iraqi leader was put to death, she marked the occasion by wearing a serpent with a sword through it. Men have power ties, but Albright had her pins, and world leaders paid attention. To convey her dissatisfaction with the Russians on human rights, she wore three monkeys to symbolize see no evil...hear no evil...speak no evil. When the Russians were caught bugging the State Department, she wasn't subtle; she wore a huge bug.

Attorney General Eric Holder got plenty of attention Wednesday for announcing a new policy that is supposed to “strengthen public confidence” when the Justice Department invokes “state secrets” to shut down lawsuits alleging wrongdoing by the CIA or other U.S. government agencies.

But as national-security lawyers pore over the fine print, they are seeing a lot less than meets the eye. Although Holder is setting up a new high-level review process before Justice invokes the so-called state-secrets privilege, the new policy is unlikely to affect the high-profile cases “people care about”─such as claims that government officials violated the law when they conducted warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens or rendered terror suspects to countries that practice torture, according to Robert Chesney, a University of Texas law professor who has studied the use of the state-secrets privilege.

Chesney thinks that the new policy could have a “real impact” on “the margins”─by forcing high-level Justice officials, right up to the attorney general himself, to personally review a case before Justice lawyers invoke the privilege to prevent a lawsuit from going forward. He also says there will be somewhat more “accountability”: if the A.G. concludes that a lawsuit makes credible allegations of wrongdoing by federal officials, Justice will refer the matter to the inspector general of the relevant agency that is being sued so the claims can be investigated. The catch, as Chesney notes, is that none of that will become public. “Nothing in the policy will bring the public in as a checking mechanism,” he says.

The U.S. government's policy of "normalizing" relations with Muammar Kaddafi─once touted as one of President Bush's major foreign-policy achievements and continued by President Obama─looked more embarrassing than ever on Wednesday when the erratic Libyan leader delivered a bizarre talk to the United Nations defending the Taliban and suggesting Israel was behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

"Why are we against the Taliban? Why are we against Afghanistan?" Kaddafi asked the leaders of more than 120 nations attending the annual General Assembly debate. "If the Taliban wants to make a religious state, OK, like the Vatican. Does the Vatican constitute a danger against us?"

Even before the talk, two of President Obama's chief foreign-policy aides told families of the victims of the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing that the White House was taking painstaking precautions to prevent any presidential interaction with Kaddafi, according to two of those who attended the session and described it to NEWSWEEK.

Screengrab from CarlyforCalifornia.com

Former Hewlett-Packard chairwoman Carly Fiorina is out with a new site today previewing her not-yet-official run against Sen. Barbara Boxer in California next year. And it is, how should we put it, a little weird. The site is fairly bare-bones─perhaps not surprising considering the “Is she running or not?” dance that Fiorina has been doing the past few weeks. It features a somewhat puzzling Flash sequence that we are guessing is aimed at illustrating the vast differences between Fiorina and Boxer: “It’s day & night. It’s dogs & cats. It’s good & bad. It’s Carly vs. Boxer.” Wait a minute─it’s dogs and cats?  It’s day and night? That’s followed by an even more puzzling message: “Coming Soon?” Um, Carly, shouldn’t you be telling us that? And then there is the kicker: Carlyfornia Dreamin’!!!”  That’s either the worst pun we’ve ever seen or a stroke of brilliance aimed at getting Internet eyeballs on the day when people are scouring Google for gossip about John Phillips, the lead singer of the Mamas and the Papas. Who are we kidding? It's a pretty bad pun. But we still have to give Boxer some grief. The incumbent senator is raising money on her site by selling "Boxer shorts." Get it?

Since Susan Page's exclusive preview of Taylor Branch's upcoming book about Bill Clinton appeared on the front page of USA Today on Monday, we've been treated to all sorts of juicy tales from the Clinton years. Courtesy of a series of recorded interviews Branch conducted with Clinton, we've heard about drunken Boris Yeltsin trying to hail a cab in his underwear on Pennsylvania Avenue and Clinton's tiffs with Al Gore after the VP lost the 2000 election. But none of these stories grabbed our attention more than this one, which we learned about from David Corn at Mother Jones:

Clinton insisted to Gore that he hadn't cared about how Gore had referred to Clinton─and his personal scandal─during the campaign. Paraphasing this portion of the conversation, Branch writes that Clinton told Gore, "To gain votes, he would let Gore cut off his ear and mail it to reporter Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, the Monica Lewinsky expert."

Ex-congressman's Mark Foley’s new radio show debuted this evening, and man, was it a snoozer. When Seaview AM 960 in Palm Beach County, Fla., first announced that the disgraced former representative was going to take to the airwaves, it titled the program Inside the Mind of Mark Foley. This sounded like an exhilarating proposition─a little creepy, maybe, but definitely worth a listen. How deeply into his psyche would we be venturing, and what fascinating and disturbing things would we discover?

Well, it turns out, not much. The show is now called Foley on Politics, and rather than delving into the stuff we really want to know─like how he reconciled working on the Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus with sending suggestive e-mails to minors─instead we got to hear his thoughts on the importance of means-testing programs. We heard his take on Wall Street bankers (they’ve “taken and taken and taken from us”) and Joe Wilson (a “mild-mannered guy,” believe it or not). We also learned that the legislative process is “insidious,” that bills are full of “chicanery,” and that lobbyists are “Dr. Kevorkians” intent on annihilating opposing interests. Not that he has bad feelings toward Congress. He isn’t "somebody who has an ax to grind,” he reassured listeners. True, he noted, people on the Hill who used to call themselves friends, it turns out, weren’t. “I don’t hear from them anymore,” he said. “Now, I left under different circumstances. But nonetheless.”

OK, Katie. I hear what you're saying. And in theory, I agree. The current law in Massachusetts─the one that prevents a sitting governor from filling a Senate vacancy with an interim appointment before the special election─is, in fact, an "affront to democracy." Like the rest of us, Massachusettans deserve to be fully represented in Congress at all times, even if the dominant political party feels threatened. But just because the law is stupid doesn't mean it's illegitimate. Fact is, the law is the law. If Bay State Dems were so worried about Romney appointing a Republican, perhaps they should've passed a bill mandating that the executive install a interim legislator of the same political party as the one who preceded him (assuming that's possible; if not, never mind). But now they're stuck with the bed they made, and refusing to lie in it by changing the law inescapably smacks of partisan hypocrisy.

That said, the Republicans railing against the decision are wrong as well. Why? Because the American people did elect 60 Democrats to Senate. Seeking to take advantage of Ted Kennedy's death to void the will of the electorate and thwart health-care reform─something that Kennedy had long considered his life's work─is even more reprehensible than seeking to overturn an idiotic law for naked political gain. Seriously. It's downright macabre. 

So what to do? Ask the GOP to play nice.

The last time we saw Tom DeLay, he was a scandal-ridden leper slinking back to Texas with nothing left but that giant, threatening smile that made even people who liked him kind of hate him. He had lost it all─his post as house majority leader, his congressional seat, his standing reservation at Signatures, Jack Abramoff’s expense-account lunchery for Republicans headed for ignominy, or prison, or both. Perhaps worst of all, DeLay had lost his mojo as “The Hammer,” the one guy you didn’t dare cross on Capitol Hill and expect to survive. Until the end, he cast himself as a victim of power-hungry Democrats, even though it was Republicans who ultimately threw him overboard. He knew how it worked—after all, he’d done the same thing to Newt Gingrich. And so DeLay went, but he didn’t like it, and like a character straight out of a Sergio Leone spaghetti Western, he promised to get justice and clear his name. “I’ll be back,” DeLay vowed.

Turns out he was right. Last night Tom DeLay made his comeback, and truly, it was a low moment in our nation’s long and stormy history, by which we mean it was totally and completely awesome in every imaginable way. Disgraced politicians choose many paths of redemption, but never did we imagine his resurrection would involve gratuitous booty shaking, cringe-inducing lip syncing and a knee slide straight out of  Footloose 2: The Grandpa Years. But that’s what happened last night as DeLay made his big debut on ABC’s Dancing With the Stars. The honest truth is that no words are equal to the task of describing the six astonishing minutes of screentime DeLay commanded last night. It was like the mother of all car wrecks: sickmaking in the extreme, but impossible to turn away.

It's no secret that August was a bad month for the President. Health care reform stalled, his approval ratings slid and the faces of angry voters castigating their representatives were plastered all over the media. So has September treated him any better? Judging by a series of polls conducted since the President's speech to Congress, things are looking up a little for the president, but the evidence is far from overwhelming.

Obama received the most dramatic improvement in his job approval figures from CNN / Opinion Research's polls. In late August (8/28-8/31) CNN had Obama at 53% approval, putting them in the middle of the polling pack at that point. For context, at around the same time Rasmussen reported the lowest Presidential approval rating - 48% - and McClatchy and CBS tied for the highest - 56%. Following the September 9 speech, CNN saw the Obama's approval ratings jump five points to 58%. Pew research had Obama increasing from 51% in late August to 55% post-speech, while Fox's poll showed the President up one point to 54%. Rasmussen and Gallup also had the president up 1 percentage point to 52% and 49% respectively. ABC and the Washington Post didn't conduct a poll in late August, but their post speech poll showed him down 3 percentage points to 54, when compared with their mid August poll.

Big news up here in New York this weekend was that President Obama has taken the unusual measure of intervening in a statewide Democratic primary.  New York Governor David Paterson, the first African-American governor in New York's history, faces terribly low approval ratings and the White House privately asked him to drop out of his re-election bid in 2010. On Sunday, just before Obama arrived here for the U.N. General Assembly, Paterson rebuffed him, saying publicly that he is staying in the race, which made for an awkward scene today. Normally in New York, where Democrats hold a 5-3 advantage in voter registration and the state Republican Party has been in disarray, Democrats do not have much to worry about statewide elections. But Paterson looks vulnerable, so former Republican Senatorial candidate Rick Lazio is expected to announce his candidacy and Rudy Giuliani could also get into the race.

Kevin Drum, over at Mother Jones magazine, made a compelling case earlier this week for the merits of true bipartisanship. He writes:

Bipartisanship is in bad odor these days because it's associated with a knee-jerk, David Broderish tendency to assume that the answer to any policy dilemma is automatically halfway between the liberal position and the conservative position. But that sells bipartisanship short. Where it shines is its ability to allow politicians to make tough decisions. If all you want to do is hand out goodies—tax cuts, prescription drugs, defense contracts—life is easy. Everyone loves goodies. You don't need help from your opposite numbers to get stuff like that through Congress. But what if you want to pass something tougher? Something that takes as well as gives? If you have bipartisan support, you can do it right: you can stand up to special interests and K Street lobbyists and enact real reform.  But you can only do this if you have political cover and plenty of votes. If, instead, you have to do it in the face of implacable partisan opposition, then you can't afford to make any more enemies. Every vote is precious, and that means instead of standing up to special interests, you have to buy them off. 

Essentially Drum argues that if a congressional edict is going to aggravate powerful interests—especially if it will cost private-sector entities buckets of cash—then it's much easier to pull that off if you have a lot of supporters. His piece then critiques Republicans for unanimously opposing measures that fit with their core principles. In health care for example, Democrats are proposing to cut millions of dollars of waste from the Medicare system. Such spending discipline is usually music to the ears of GOPers. And yet Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, are vehemently opposing what they decry as cuts to Medicare services. Democratic attempts to make the system more efficient—something you'd assume sensible Republicans would support—are portrayed as hanging seniors out to dry.

Edmund Burke famously once said that manners were more important than laws: "Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in". This week will likely be remembered as the week America forgot its manners. From Wilson to Kanye, incivility has been rife. Our talented video team has put together an homage to those who just couldn't keep their mouths shut in a new feature, Weekly Obsession. Enjoy.

Unless you watch Fox, get ready to see a lot of President Obama in the coming days. At the White House today, Obama is taping interviews with ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Univision to be shown during each network’s Sunday-morning talk shows. On Monday night, Obama will be the first sitting president to appear on the Late Show With David Letterman. In other words, it’s going to be all Obama all the time for the next few days─except on Fox, which hasn’t exactly had the best of relationships with this White House. The subject of this media blitz: Obama’s push for health-care reform. It’s a Hail Mary strategy not unlike what we saw last spring when Obama hit all the networks to boost public support for his then-struggling stimulus plan. It worked then. Can Obama do it again?

By Krista Gesamen

What do Arnold Palmer, Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity, and a Louisville Slugger have in common? Each was honored with a bill or resolution by the 111^th Congress this year. Even though Senate nominations are moving at a snail's pace, budget resolutions are seriously behind and health care has sucked all of the air out of the room for months, Congressional leaders manage to find time to introduce - and pass - all sorts of quirky bills. Of course many of these ceremonial bills take little time to draft or debate. But with so many pressing issues before Congress, why bother at all? Probably because these bills are very meaningful to small but important constituencies. And they're a nice addition to one's Congressional record. Here are a few of the more interesting ones we spotted.

Anyone who watches cable news surely knows that conservatives are getting themselves all hot and bothered over the Obama administration's appointment of so-called czars. Today, the Democratic National Committee is going nuts in response. I've got more e-mails from them about this today than I care to count. This whole debate is descending into complete partisan hackery: GOP operatives are fanning ridiculous fears while Democrats are proffering inflated claims to counter them. That said, a lot of people do appear concerned by the existence of "czars," so I think the issue merits a quick discussion. Of course, the points I'm about to list come with the caveat that a lack of accountability for public officials should always be of concern in a democracy. But these czars aren't beyond the bounds of reproach, nor are they entirely apart from the democratic process—they're accountable to the White House, which of course is elected. Some of them even needed Senate confirmation. And don't forget, Congress can still impeach the president if he has done something truly bad.

With that said, on to my points:

1. There doesn't seem to be any real agreement on what constitutes a czar. Some are special assistants, others are envoys, and others still are policy advisers. The only thing they seem to have in common is a lack of congressional oversight, but that's not so different from hundreds of other administration employees. You can't call Robert Gibbs up before a congressional committee if you don't like his press briefings. 

Photo by Jim Watson/AFP

Here’s President Obama dueling with, yes, a Star Wars light saber at an event held this afternoon at the White House to promote Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics. Asked about her husband’s fencing abilities, first lady Michelle Obama was simply unsparing in her critique. “It was pathetic,” she told reporters, per CBS’s Mark Knoller. Pretty funny—though not as humorous as we’re guessing your caption ideas could be. Leave us your ideas in the comments.

Senate Finance chair Max Baucus finally unveiled his health-care bill today. Baucus is the last committee chairman to weigh in on reform, largely because he has spent months wrangling with Republicans for their support. The result? A whole lotta nothin'. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell immediately denounced the bill, calling it a "partisan proposal" and claiming it will create "massive new tax burdens on families and small businesses." No GOPers have had a kind word to say about it as yet. Baucus is keeping his fingers crossed that Olympia Snowe will ultimately come on board, but does one GOP vote really make for a bipartisan bill?

What happened to White House fact checkers? In today’s Washington Post, President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, sought to portray the administration’s current crop of conservative critics as the latest in a long line of reactionaries who have assailed Democratic presidents in the past. “Father Coughlin called Roosevelt a socialist, the John Birch Society was created in reaction to Kennedy, Clinton had [Richard Mellon] Scaife and others who went after him,” Rahmbo is quoted as saying in Anne B. Kornblut’s front page article in today’s Washington Post.

True enough on Coughlin and Scaife, but Emanuel misfired on the John Birch Society. The notorious anticommunist organization of yesteryear was founded in 1958, more than two years before John Kennedy became president, according to the group’s Web site. (And how fascinating to see the Birchers are still up and running and operating out of their current headquarters in Appleton, Wis., hometown of their patron saint, the late senator Joe McCarthy.) Actually, this shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise to students of modern American political paranoia. The John Birch Society first made a name for itself in those pre-Kennedy presidency days when its founder, retired candy manufacturer Robert Welch, suggested that President Dwight Eisenhower was a “conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist conspiracy.” (Welch went a bit further, saying Ike was actually controlled within the Communist apparatus by his brother Milton, adding for good measure that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and CIA Director Allen Dulles were conspiratorial Commie partners.)

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) today introduced a bill seeking to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which was first passed in 1996. Nadler's bill has 91 cosponsors. Not among them is openly gay Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, who basically said the bill won't go anywhere. According to the New England gay newspaper Bay Windows, Frank says that Nadler's legislation "has zero chance of passage, even out of committee. It's a mistake." 

When even liberal Barney Frank is calling progressive legislation a mistake, he's most probably right, much to the chagrin of those in the gay community who are already disappointed by a lack of movement on their issues this year. Frank points out that there are four other pieces of pending legislation related to gay issues, each of which has a decent chance of passing: a hate-crimes bill, a repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," an employment nondiscrimination act, and a bill that would extend benefits to partners of gay federal employees. Frank is worried that Nadler's legislation, which would federally recognize married gay couples regardless of whether the relevant state authority does so, would be viewed by some members as an unacceptable infringement on states' rights, and thus would fail. 

How is the government going to pay the upfront 10-year costs of health-care reform (a.k.a. health-insurance reform)? Well, despite months of hearings, committee markups, and backstage negotiating, the White House and Hill Democrats are still making up the answer as they go along. That's my conclusion based on what I was told─and not told─during and after a White House background briefing before the president's address to Congress last week. As outlined, Barack Obama's preferred compromise plan would cost $900 billion over 10 years. At the briefing, I and a group of other reporters and columnists were told that $600 billion of that cost would be recouped through savings in the administration and the medical practices of Medicare, Medicaid, and other existing (and presumably very wasteful and poorly designed) programs. Another $200 billion, we were told, would come from proceeds of a new "fee" on high-end "Cadillac" health-care plans.

Has President Obama finally found an issue that could unite both Democrats and Republicans in Washington? Obama was wrapping up an interview with CNBC tonight when he was asked about hip-hop star Kanye West’s bizarre appearance at Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards. According to an ABC reporter who later posted the comment on Twitter, Obama called Kanye a "jackass."

Now, in case you’ve been in a cave for the past 36 hours, here’s what happened: West dashed on stage during the show and ripped the microphone away from teen country starlet Taylor Swift as she was accepting an award for Best Female Video. “Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you. I’ll let you finish, but Beyonce has one of the best videos of all time,” West declared. “One of the best videos of ALL TIME!!” Swift, who is perhaps most famous for being dumped by a Jonas brother, just stood there, looking dazed. Needless to say, the clip was candy to the cable TV nets, which aired it hundreds of times on Monday. It was also the talk of the Internet--where an incredibly humorous mash-up video, posted above, made the rounds. In it, it was made to look like it was West who interrupted Obama’s speech last week to Congress, not Rep. Joe “You LIE!!” Wilson. (Your Gaggler’s favorite moment: the almost hand-clap from Lindsey Graham, who we could actually envision being a fan of Beyonce.)

By Jeremy Herb

Ever wondered what your doctor thinks about the public option? A survey published today found most doctors are in favor of it. The study, funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, found nearly three-quarters of physicians surveyed supported a public option in the U.S. health-care system. The majority, 63 percent, favored a health-care system with both private and government-run insurance options, and 10 percent preferred a public-only system. Twenty-seven percent favored a private insurance system without creating a public option.

The report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and written by Salmoeh Keyhani and Alex Federman from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, surveyed 2,130 physicians between June 25 and Sept. 3. The poll examined support for the public option geographically, too, finding that a majority of physicians in all regions supported it. "The clear message here is that physicians who are on the front line of the health-care system know the system is broken and that it's time for us to do something about it," says John Lumpkins, a senior vice president at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

by Kurt Soller

Both of Chicago's famous politicians were in New York today, butwhile Obama was speaking on Wall Street reform, Rod Blagojevich wasspeaking for... himself. He was here promoting the release of his book,The Governor, which is his account on the scandal that made himthe governor no more. He's doing the talk show circuit today andtomorrow, though he was more impressed with radio: "You have to listento the Howard Stern interview I did," he told this guest Gaggler."Let's just say he asked me questions that I've never been asked beforein a public way."

Sounds titillating, so it’s too bad we can’t find a clip (or transcript) online.

What's funny to us, though, is that Blagojevich was sitting outsideeating lunch, right on the route of President Obama's motorcade. Did hepick this BBQ jointso that he could spot the President? "No, definitely not, but it'sinteresting because this all goes back to him," he says, referencingthat Senate seat that's the cornerstone of his corruption charges. Thatmeans he wasn't there when Obama came by -- and he's OK with that: "Iwouldn't want to embarrass the President in any way by being here."

The left has rapped Obama and his administration for being too cozy with Wall Street, for being too tight with the perpetrators of the debacle, and for being too unwilling to come down hard on the financial system that nearly bankrupted the nation through a combination of greed, arrogance, and incompetence.

There’s some accuracy to that point of view, and to the general sense you’ll see in the analysis of the one-year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers debacle that not much has changed on Wall Street. Banks are still using leverage, paying big bonuses, and figuring out ways to game the system to profit.

But President Obama, speaking at the heart of historic Wall Street in Federal Hall, is surveying an industry and financial system that has changed significantly in the past year. And his tone isn’t exactly conciliatory and fawning. In essence, he’s saying: don’t make me come back here again:

Lehman Brothers is dead; long live Lehman Brothers. Exactly one year after the ill-fated financial colossus filed for bankruptcy, spurring weeks of economic chaos and months of crippling recession, the verdict is in: little has changed in the culture of Wall Street.

With that in mind, President Obama is set to mark the anniversary of Lehman's collapse today with a "major" speech that, he hopes, will reinvigorate efforts to overhaul the banking system. Congressional enthusiasim for reform proposals introduced by the White House earlier this summer has stalled, beaten back by a vicious health care debate and industry opposition. So, just after noon at New York's Federal Hall, located in the heart of the financial district, Obama will seek to shift the focus back to the Street. The timing is just as significant as the location; in a little over a week, the G20 will meet in Pittsburgh, presenting a do-or-die opportunity to get the world's economic movers and shakers on one page. Press secretary Robert Gibbs has said the president doesn't plan to introduce any brand new proposals, but, if the White House is serious about pushing through meaningful reforms, here are a few points Obama might hammer home today:

Ben Smith at Politico has got his paws on an interesting memo from David Binder, one of the guys who ran Obama's polling and focus groups for his campaign. Binder conducted focus groups in Arizona to gauge voter reaction to Obama's address to Congress Wednesday night. Here's what Binder found:

The most strongly rated passages of the President's speech (with average ratings of 80 or above) break into three areas: 1) specific goals of reform (i.e. the specifics of the insurance industry reforms, increasing insurance industry accountability, and ensuring choice and competition); 2) the need for change now (i.e. the unacceptability of the status quo and that the time for bickering is over); and 3) the relationship between health care reform and American values.

Expect to see Congressional Democrats mimicking these points in days to come. Undoubtedly point two will be of particular interest.

NEWSWEEK's economics guru Daniel Gross has a fascinating column out today about whether, health-care reform notwithstanding, we are entering an era in which only a minority of Americans have access to employer-based coverage. Gross uses census data to make his point. Here are the important stats:

Number of people getting health insurance from a government source (Medicare, Medicaid, VA) in 2008: 29%

Number of people receiving employer-based insurance in 2008: 58.5%

Number of people receiving employer-based insurance in 2000: 64.2%

Number of people in government jobs (therefore receiving health benefits from a government employer): 17%

If health-care reform opponents are determined to preserve the coverage that they have, then these figures should be of concern.

Screen shot courtesy of AP Video

Joe “YOU LIE!!!!” Wilson may be getting all of the attention in Washington today, but who will ever forget that death glare that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shot Wilson moments after he unleashed his id on President Obama? Talk about withering─no wonder Wilson looked so shaky when he went before reporters this morning. This is why we enjoy watching Pelosi so much whenever Obama gives a big speech before Congress. She hovers over his shoulder in that big brown chair, trying to smile and act cheery. Sometimes Pop-Up Pelosi’s outbursts of enthusiasm seem truly genuine. But when someone annoys her, even just a little bit, she can’t hide it. After all, we’re talking about a lady who likes to run a tight ship and those who cross her … well, she lets them have it. Last night was no exception: sitting over Obama’s left shoulder, Pelosi bounced between moments of smiling and seething. And while Republicans were her primary annoyance, she shot some fairly telling looks to Democrats too. Who officially made Pelosi’s s--t list last night? Where do we begin?

In last night's speech to the joint session of Congress, the president was pretty tough on his opponents, pounding them on "scare tactics" and accusing them of trying to score short-term political points at the expense of the nation's well-being. But he held out one glimmer of hope to Republicans: medical-liability, or "tort," reform. "I don't believe malpractice reform is a silver bullet, but I've talked to enough doctors to know that defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs," the president said, prompting enthusiastic applause from the GOP. He unveiled a plan to pursue "demonstration projects" in various states that would explore several options for reducing defensive medicine practices while ensuring patient safety. Obama has directed Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to commence work on the projects immediately.

Tort reform has long been a pet issue for Republicans, and it's broadly popular with voters. A recent poll by Common Good and the Committee for Economic Development found that 83 percent of Americans want tort reform included in health-care reform. Additionally, 67 percent prefer the idea of a separate system of health courts to decide malpractice cases over the existing system. In committing to tort reform, the president may well have changed the political landscape of the health-care debate.

 
All in the Family: Rep. Joe Wilson (left) and his son, Alan Wilson, who is running for attorney general in South Carolina. Both men, and three of Rep. Wilson’s other sons, get free military medical coverage. 

By Adam Weinstein 

Poor Joe Wilson. The conservative Republican representative from South Carolina stepped in it Wednesday night, when he broke with centuries of decorum by screaming, "You lie!" at President Obama during his health-care speech to a joint session of Congress.

Cut the man some slack. He's passionate! I know this because he told me, in the sole message that blazes across his campaign Web site: "JOE WILSON IS PASSIONATE ABOUT STOPPING GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE!"

It's been more than six months since I last sat in the chamber of the House of Representatives to watch President Obama address a joint session of Congress. In some ways it felt very similar. Obama still got a rock-star reception when he entered the room. Hillary Clinton was again greeted warmly, like an old friend, by her former Senate colleagues. John McCain and Lindsey Graham sat together, chattering to each other at every opportunity, reluctantly joining the standing ovations at a few choice points. Anthony Weiner couldn't stop checking his BlackBerry. Nancy Pelosi popped up so promptly and often that she appeared animatronic. In between, she surveyed the room with her cool, critical eye.

Not everything felt the same, though. For starters, Al Franken was on the floor. And this time, John McCain got props for a health-care proposal and gave the president a big grin and a thumbs-up. In a marked departure from his February speech, Obama got heckled and, at one point, laughed at. But perhaps the difference is best explained by senior Obama adviser David Axelrod. For much of the speech, Axelrod leaned intently forward, chewing gum as though it were a tough piece of flank steak he'd decided to punish. He personified the tension in the room. Obama is no stranger to high expectations, or to high-stakes speeches. This time was different, though, because never before have his plans caused so much division. The president came prepared for a fight. His tone was forceful, even terse at times. And he left aside his typical rousing rhetoric until the very end.

photo by Jim Watson/AFP-Getty Images

Sitting in the audience at a memorial for Walter Cronkite this morning, former president Bill Clinton whispers something to President Obama. Were they talking Obama’s health-care speech tonight? After all, it was 16 years ago this month that Clinton, also in the early months of his first term, went before Congress to make his pitch for health-care reform.

Last night The Washington Post reported Sen. Chris Dodd's decision to decline the chairmanship of the powerful Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (HELP), previously chaired by Ted Kennedy. Dodd wants to stay put as chair of the Senate banking committee so he can have a strong hand in developing a robust new regulatory framework for the finance sector. As a result, the HELP chairmanship will likely fall to Iowa's Tom Harkin. The committee is a natural fit for the reliably liberal Harkin, who is best known for championing disabilities legislation. 

President Obama’s highly anticipated speech to Congress won’t be must-see TV just because of what he’ll say to lawmakers tonight. Equally, if not more important is the reception he’ll get from members of Congress, in particular the woman sitting directly over his left shoulder: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Who can forget how enthusiastic Pelosi was during Obama’s last speech to Congress in February, when she leapt up to offer applause so often that Gawker dubbed her “Pop-Up Pelosi.” Will she be as excited tonight? Probably not, as the White House has signaled that Obama won’t draw a line in the sand over the creation of a public insurance option in the health-care reform bill. Perhaps more than anyone on Capitol Hill, Pelosi has advocated for the public option. Should Obama signal he’d support a bill without it, it could prompt a major rift with a key Democrat who has frequently shown she doesn’t mind playing frenemy to the White House.

Pelosi has remained strongly in support of the public plan, even as the White House and other top Democrats have dialed back in recent days. When Obama aides hinted last week that their boss might push for a bill without the government-sponsored insurance plan he had advocated so strongly during the campaign, Pelosi promptly issued a statement pushing back. “A bill without a strong public option will not pass the House,” she said. But on Tuesday, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Pelosi’s No. 2, contradicted Pelosi, telling reporters that while he personally supported a public option, a reform bill without it would still be “very good.” “If the public option isn’t in there, I could still support a bill because I think there’s a lot in there that is good,” Hoyer said. Not long after, Rep. James Clyburn, the No. 3 Democrat in the House, told MSNBC that he could support a bill in which the public option would go into effect only if insurance companies didn’t meet a cost or coverage “trigger”—a move that Pelosi has long opposed.

By Jeremy Herb

By David A. Graham

Sooner or later, anything trendy makesits way to the world of politics. This year, it's been the advent ofthe microblog. Hundreds of politicians have flocked to themicroblogging services like Facebook and Twitter over the past fewmonths, heralding it's ability to help them keep in touch with folksback home. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger even dropped byTwitter's headquarters last month to praise it for the services thesite offers politicians to communicate with constituents. But for everypol that's mastered the art of the status update, others (includingSchwarzenegger) have watched it backfire, earning them far moreunflattering press than they bargained for. We bring you the 10 biggestsocial media gaffes we’ve seen from politicos this year—at least so far.

By Krista Gesaman 

This November, residents of Washington State will go to the polls to decide the fate of same sex domestic partnerships, voting on Referendum 71 (R-71). Nicknamed the "everything but marriage"proposition, R-71 proposes an expansion of a current domestic partnership law to include adoption rights, child support, pension and other public employee benefits for same-sex couples. Although gay partners would have all the rights afforded married couples, the state will refrain from using the term“marriage”. But right now, voters are less worried about what's actually on the ballot than how it got there in the first place. In Washington, as in most states, supporters must collect a threshold number of signatures for a ballot initiative to go to the polls. In the case of R-71, those who signed were asked to include their name,occupation and address. Now, a political group wants to publish the names of the 121,000 residents who signed on the internet. 

There were a lot of smirks adorning the faces of Bostonians yesterday morning, presumably a collective judgment on the revelation that retired Red Sox pitching ace Curt Schilling is contemplating a run for the late Teddy Kennedy’s Senate seat. Of course, those are probably many of the same folks who gave up the ghost back in 2004 when Schilling, bleeding team colors from an ankle tendon that had been stitched up in Rube Goldberg fashion, limped out to the mound against the New York Yankees in a desperate moment on Boston’s path to its first championship in 88 years. So could Schilling’s path to Washington and Congress be any more improbable than that?

It has long been assumed that Schilling, 42, with his outspoken activism including high-profile campaigns to raise money to fight ALS and to boost awareness of the dangers of skin cancer, harbored political ambitions. But most believed he would run for the Senate from Arizona, where he also pitched a team to a World Series title and where his strident conservatism and born-again faith would be more in fashion with voters than in the blue-state bastion of Massachusetts. But Arizona appears blocked, with Jon Kyl ensconced as Senate minority whip and John McCain showing no sign of wanting to retire to any of his homes. Massachusetts has the obvious virtue of an open seat with no obvious successor to Kennedy. So far Schilling has only allowed—on his popular blog, 38 pitches.com—that he is considering the possibility of a Senate run, but that “many, many things would have to align themselves for that to truly happen.”

That cryptic sentiment is rather strange for the shoot-from-the lip Schilling, who is famous for firing verbal brickbats at reporters, drug cheats and anybody else who riles him.

Just when you thought August recess couldn't get any wackier, conservative talk show hosts have stirred up a hornets' nest over President Obama's planned speech to the nation's school children next Tuesday. Obama plans to tout the value of education, encouraging kids to work hard and stay in school. But now, after working themselves up into a frenzy over death panels and nazi symbols, conservative critics are inspiring a new wave of madness, calling the speech a political recruiting tool and partisan propaganda. Florida Republican Chairman Jim Greer took an incredible leap of logic, saying that Obama intends to "indoctrinate America's children to his socialist agenda."

According to newspaper reports in Texas, Florida and Colorado, parents have called local schools requesting that their children be excused from viewing the speech or threatening to keep their kids home if the speech is shown in their classrooms. In response, the White House has taken the unusual step of promising to make Obama's remarks available a full 24 hours before he delivers the speech at an Arlington, VA, high school. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has written to teachers encouraging them to incorporate the speech into their lesson plans, using the President's message about hard work as a learning tool. But, in reaction to concerns from parents, some schools have decided that the speech won't be discussed at all in their classrooms, leaving it up to parents to decide whether the speech merits a conversation with adults.

On Tuesday, David Brooks wrote a column in The New York Times about the rapidity of Obama's decline in opinion polls. Towards the end of the piece, he wrote the following, which caught my attention:

Some now argue that the administration should just ignore the ignorant masses and ram health care through using reconciliation, the legislative maneuver that would reduce the need for moderate votes. This would be suicidal. You can't pass the most important domestic reform in a generation when the majority of voters think you are on the wrong path. To do so would be a sign of unmitigated arrogance. If Obama agrees to use reconciliation, he will permanently affix himself to the liberal wing of his party and permanently alienate independents. He will be president of 35 percent of the country - and good luck getting anything done after that.

Earlier today, Holly wrote about the mixed messages emanating from the White House on the public option. They've been dancing around the question of whether a public plan is an absolutely essential component of health-care reform for months now, frustrating the left and providing ammunition for the right. But I'm not so surprised at the ambiguity about the public plan. The dirty little secret is that the health-insurance exchange─a online marketplace where eligible individuals could shop for and purchase insurance─is actually the critical component of Obama's plan, not a public option.

If we’ve learned anything over the past few weeks, it’s that even during congressional and presidential vacations, you can never completely pull the plug on politics. From those crazed town hall meetings to new revelations about enhanced interrogations to a showy vacation on the Cape capped off by a sad public funeral, it’d be enough to fill a volume. But no, that would be too easy. Instead, here’s the challenge: help us sum up the August recess in a simple haiku. That’s right, just 17 syllables broken up into three lines, five-seven-five. A few examples and how to enter, after the jump.

Gallup has today released some analysis on public perceptions of health insurers based on polls conducted from 2006-08. The data cuts to the heart of why the the President is having such difficulty in selling plans to reform health insurance: public or private, people like their health insurance. According to Gallup's data, 87% of people with private insurance and 82% of people on Medicare or Medicaid say that the quality of their health care is excellent or good. Similarly, 75% of those with private plans and 74% on government-run plans rate their insurance plan as excellent or good. It's hard to convince people that change is necessary when they are pretty content with how things are, which is part of the reason Obama's job is so hard.