The top Republicans in both the House and Senate responded by saying that while they “look forward” to the discussion and”appreciate the opportunity to share ideas with the President,” they believe that the “best way to start on real, bipartisan reform would be to scrap” the health care reform bills that have passed both the House and Senate. The office of another GOP leader, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), suggested that Republicans would not attend the White House meeting unless the Democrats abandoned their proposals:

After going it alone on health care reform for nearly a year, President Obama has decided he wants to bring Republicans into the conversation. Here’s the problem: unless the President and Speaker Pelosi are willing to scrap their government take over and hit the reset button, there’s not much to talk about.

Republicans believe the status quo is unacceptable, but so is any health reform package that spends money we don’t have or raises taxes on small businesses and working families in a recession. To that point, House Republicans have offered the only plan, that will lower health care costs, which is what the President said was the goal at the start of this debate.

The Plum Line’s Greg Sargent writes that Cantor is essentially saying “that the only way Dems can win bipartisan cooperation is to fully embrace the GOP health care plan and nothing more.” Cantor’s stubborn refusal to discuss health care openly with Obama appears to have support in the conservative base. Michelle Malkin wrote today that “Republicans should feel zero obligation to participate in yet another White House health care dog-and-pony show: Just say no.” On Fox News, conservative consultant Andrea Tantaros — who works for a PR firm that represents health care clients — declared that “the only way Republicans should meet with” Obama is if he “is committed to starting over, scrapping that stinker of a bill.” Watch it:

The White House does not intend to start over at the meeting. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein today that while Obama is willing to “add various elements” to health care legislation suggested by Republican lawmakers, he is “absolutely not” hitting the reset button on the legislative process.

The Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky notes that “at the end of the day, it will be up to the Republicans to meet the Democrats half way” and “if they still insist on starting over, they’re effectively taking themselves out of the process and giving the reins to the Democrats.” After crowing about the need for more transparency in health care negotiations, will Republicans follow through on Cantor’s threat to boycott public, televised discussions with the president that could result in more Republican ideas being incorporated into reform?

Congressman John P. Murtha (PA-12) passed away peacefully this afternoon at 1:18 p.m. at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, VA. At his bedside was his family.

Murtha, 77, was Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.

First elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in February of 1974, Murtha dedicated his life to serving his country both in the military and in the halls of Congress. A former Marine, he became the first Vietnam War combat Veteran elected to the U.S. Congress.

This past Saturday, February 6, 2010, Murtha became Pennsylvania’s longest serving Member of Congress.

Murtha was close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who supported his bid to become Majority Leader, but he was eventually beaten by Steny Hoyer (MD). During the Bush administration, Murtha became a forceful, outspoken voice for Iraq redeployment. In November 2005, the former Marine and Iraq war hawk came out and called for an immediate U.S. withdrawal in Iraq. His stance was a turning point in the war debate, clearing the way for more Democrats to speak up. “The U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home,” he declared. Murtha had also been dogged by ethics allegations regarding earmarks and his relationship with defense contractors.

Senate Democrats are planning to unveil an $80 billion jobs package this week intended to tackle the country’s unemployment problem. The Senate’s leadership is “proposing that part of the money come from funds originally allocated to the financial-sector bailout effort.”

President Obama said for the first time Tuesday that cap-and-trade legislation “may need to be separated from a more popular ‘green jobs’ bill in the Senate, a maneuver that could kill what once had been one of the administration’s top policy priorities.” A White House spokesman said Obama still favors a bill that combines both.

A “politically diverse group of bloggers, commentators, techies, and politicos” will today launch an online campaign, Demand Question Time, to call on the President to regularly hold televised debates and conversations following Friday’s Obama-GOP event. The campaigners include the Nation’s Katrina Vanden Heuvel and conservative activist Grover Norquist.

AIG plans to hand out another $100 million in employee bonuses today, “a year after similar payments at the bailed-out insurance giant infuriated many Americans.” The “retention payments” go to employees at the company’s troubled Financial Products division, which has been blamed for AIG’s downfall.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday that he has “no problem” with a plan — which Iran formally rejected just weeks ago — to “swap low-enriched uranium for fuel for a research reactor that produces medical isotopes.” “We sign a contract to give 3.5 percent enriched uranium and receive 20 percent enriched ones after four or five months,” Ahmadinejad said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) “plans to take a shot at the health insurance industry next week by scheduling a vote on a smaller bill to revoke its half-century-old exemption from antitrust laws.” The move is “part of her new two-track strategy to tackle things that won’t be included in a more sweeping bill” while “giving her members something politically popular to vote on.”

A group of progressive federal lawmakers is calling for a constitutional amendment to make clear that “corporations do not have the same free speech rights as individuals,” an attempt to “limit the impact of last month’s Supreme Court decision gutting decades of campaign finance law.” Reps. Donna Edwards (D-MD) and John Conyers (D-MI) have already introduced a bill in the House, and one will be put forward in the Senate soon.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the failed Christmas Day bomber, “started talking to investigators after two of his family members arrived in the United States and helped earn his cooperation.” A senior administration official said that “with the family, the F.B.I. approached the suspect” and Abdulmutallab “has been cooperating for days.”

Former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN) is expected to announce today that he will challenge Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) this year. Coats, who held the seat Bayh now holds from 1989 to 1999, “has worked as a lobbyist and served as U.S. ambassador to Germany during the George W. Bush administration” since leaving Congress.

And finally: The Bill Press Show punked a reporter for The Hill, convincing him that he was talking to President Obama. Listen to it here.

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KLEIN: I think that your pal Glenn Beck is peddling a lot of hateful crap. I mean, you know —

O’REILLY: But he’s funny. He’s doing it in a funny way. What’s hateful about it? [...] Look, he is every man sitting on a bar stool. Why shouldn’t every man have a show?

KLEIN: No, no, no. He’s Father Coughlin trying to delude and entertain the American [people].

O’REILLY: Oh, that’s such bull.

“I don’t think he’s a threat to the union,” Klein later added. “The union has always been too strong for nutters like Glenn Beck.” Watch it:

Just last night on his Fox News program, Beck aired a clip from his “Bold & Fresh” tour with O’Reilly in which he displayed his vaunted humor by mocking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

BECK: Nancy Pelosi I swear does anybody else think that Nancy Pelosi is beginning to look a little like Skeletor? [...] Is it just me? Am I remembering her more fondly or has she had like massive plastic surgery lately? And every time she blinks it’s getting so stretched and I feel like it must hurt when she blinks. “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.”

Watch it:

O’Reilly must think that’s really funny.

(HT: Raw Story)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has echoed this call. Korb has suggested that the White House has been reluctant to exclude these accounts out of “fear of appearing weak on defense.” However, yesterday on NBC’s Meet the Press, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) — who would likely be leading such attacks against Democrats — said that he agreed with progressives:

GREGORY: The question of spending and commonsense steps that could be taken, you heard David Axelrod say, “Look, the Republicans voted against paying as you go. They voted against a commission to control the debt.” They suggest a spending freeze, the president’s budget will. And Speaker Pelosi has said that should not exempt defense spending, it should include it. What do you say? Should the spending freeze be a good start but be expanded?

BOEHNER: I think the President’s proposal on freezing nonsecurity domestic spending is a good first step, but it’s only $15 billion for each of the next three years. I think we can do much better than that. I don’t think any agency of the federal government should be exempt from rooting out wasteful spending or unnecessary spending. And I, frankly, I would agree with it at the Pentagon. There’s got to be wasteful spending there, unnecessary spending there.

Watch it:

Korb has laid out nine reductions the Pentagon could take to cut spending. Yglesias notes that a significant amount of defense spending occupies “a middle ground between ‘waste’ and ‘defending our freedom,’” and will require a tough debate about U.S. priorities. (HT: Steve Benen)

If you look, I suspect Paul does not, but if you look at the far left-wing blogs and that kind of thing they’re severely criticizing the president for being too fiscally austere. My own take on this, Paul is right. Domestic discretionary spending increased last year. I voted against the omnibus, I voted against the “minibus” and that’s last year. the question is where do we go now? The freeze is important. He identified $20 billion if you aggregate over the next ten years is $250 billion less spending. Does it solve all our problems? No. But it’s a step in the right direction.

Watch it:

Bayh is a “deficit peacock” — someone who likes to harp on deficits, while at the same time voting for budget-busting expenditures like a $250 billion tax cut for the heirs of wealthy families. Despite Bayh’s preening, “far left-wing” blogs haven’t been the only critics of Obama’s freeze. Additionally, part of why progressives are criticizing Obama about is not that the spending freeze is too “austere,” but that it doesn’t go after defense spending. As Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb has argued, “If President Obama is serious about controlling spending, he can’t exempt the Pentagon.” And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) concurs, telling reporters that the entire defense budget “should not be exempted” from the freeze.

“Can you tell the American people that there aren’t any savings to be found in the Defense and Homeland Security budgets?” ThinkProgress asked Axelrod. The President’s Senior Adviser acknowledged, no, “I can’t tell you that” there aren’t savings which can be found there.

Axelrod highlighted prior efforts by the administration to rein in defense spending and insisted that further cuts could still be made. Yet the Pentagon budget — which is expected to exceed $700 billion when Obama unveils his budget on Feb. 1st — remains inexplicably exempt from the spending freeze.

“We live in a dangerous world,” Axelrod said in trying to justify the special exclusion for the defense budget. “What we can’t do at a time when we’re in two wars and we have a very determined enemy in Al Qaeda, we can’t stand down,” he added in an interview with Fox News. Yet, rather than carve out an exclusion to fund troops in the field, the administration opted for a more expansive exclusion. And while cuts might indeed be made to certain programs, the overall Pentagon budget will be allowed to increase without having to face the difficult tradeoffs that other departments will.

Asked whether politics played any part in the decision to carve out a special exclusion for national security-related budgets, Axelrod denied that it did. “There weren’t any meetings that I was in where that was talked about,” he told us.

As Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb has argued, “If President Obama is serious about controlling spending, he can’t exempt the Pentagon.” And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) concurs, telling reporters yesterday that the entire defense budget “should not be exempted” from the freeze.

Last October, 31 House Republicans introduced a congressional resolution honoring O’Keefe for his efforts against ACORN. Rep. Steve King (R-IA), one of the resolution’s cosponsors, has fought to ban funding to an ACORN affiliate and has been one of O’Keefe’s most vocal fans. At a press conference, ThinkProgress asked King if he would withdraw his support for the resolution, given news of O’Keefe’s arrest. But King dodged the question repeatedly, at one point defending O’Keefe, then later suggesting his resolution praising the conservative activist is frivolous compared to what Congress should be debating right now. At one point, the Iowa congressman floated the possibility of a conspiracy against O’Keefe, noting, “It seems really convenient that this would happen now”:

TP: Several of you, and I think some of your colleagues signed onto a resolution honoring James O’Keefe, the conservative activist who was in the news recently because he was caught trying to wiretap Sen. Landreu’s office.

KING: you are innocent until proven guilty and it’s off topic so I won’t– [...] You know, I think that — I wanted to dig into that and find out some more details that I could pick up. Some of the behind the scenes information, because it seems really convenient that this would happen now. [...]

TP: Congressman King, I’m just trying to figure this out. You pushed an effort to defund ACORN, but at the same time you are saying James O’Keefe is innocent until proven guilty. You’ve already passed judgement on ACORN without a trial.

KING: We pass judgment all the time [...] He has been picked up and the allegations are that he committed an act. Now he is innocent until proven guilty. ACORN needs to be investigated.

TP: And if Pelosi forced a vote on the O’Keefe resolution would you vote on it.

KING: I’d want to see the language. Why would we focus on this?

Watch the video produced by Victor Zapanta:

It’s odd that King isn’t aware of the O’Keefe resolution’s language seeing that he cosponsored it. Also, while downplaying O’Keefe’s purported attempt to wiretap Landrieu, King brushed off the alleged crime as simply an “act.” If O’Keefe was attempting to wiretap the Senator — a suspicion reported in the press given the fact his cohorts were caught tampering with phones while posing as telephone company employees — he would be accessing private conversations that might deal with Landrieu’s sensitive work on the Homeland Security Committee, which deals with matters of terrorism and national security.

Learning the wrong lessons from a Massachusetts election, Democrats are finding difficulty motivating their solid majorities in the House and Senate to finish what they started. The outcome in Massachusetts didn’t change the basic fundamental questions: Can we afford the status quo, and is the current reform bill better than doing nothing at all?

Last year, Senate and House Democrats pledged to fix the broken health care system and put the nation on a sustainable economic path by repeatedly voting for change. If they’re still committed to that goal, then passing the Senate health care bill alongside a reconciliation package to improve the underlining legislation and address popular concerns is the only way to achieve the change voters demanded in 2008.

Trying to pass a scaled-back version of reform would drag out the process, fail to substantially lower costs or improve access, and do so without any assurance that it will be any more popular in Congress. Democrats therefore have two choices: pass an improved version of the Senate health care bill or abandon the effort altogether. If Democrats chose the latter, millions more Americans would go without health care and health care costs would continue to skyrocket. Politically, the Democratic Party will be ridiculed for talking a big game but delivering no results. They will lose their progressive base and outsource their agenda to the Republican minority — all simply because their supermajority of 60 shrank to 59.

Democrats are hesitant to vote again for an unpopular health care bill. They fear that the Massachusetts elections are a bellwether of the upcoming midterms. Change of the magnitude envisioned by health care reformers certainly does not come easily. As Obama said in March, “To kick these problems down the road for another four years or another eight years would be to continue the same irresponsibility that led us to this point. That’s not why I ran for this office. I didn’t come here to pass on our problems to the next President or the next generation — I came here to solve them.”

The Democrats have an opportunity to improve health care for millions of Americans. They will regret squandering this moment if they cannot regroup now.

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

HUCKABEE: I want to be careful to not let Republicans get a little too giddy about this. Here’s the fact. I think that this was the beginning of the end of the Democratic domination of Congress. But let me go out on a limb tonight, Greta, and tell you that this is probably the beginning of the reelection of Barack Obama because he’s going to have to make course corrections that will likely put him in a much better position in his reelection bid than he would have been had he continued on this Pelosi/Reid-led disastrous trip off the cliff.

Watch it:

Voters “have fallen out of love with the Democrats,” Rep. Adam Putnam (R-FL) told Politico. “They haven’t yet fallen back in love with us.”

– Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA): “In many ways the campaign in Massachusetts became a referendum not only on health care reform…I believe it would only be fair and prudent that we suspend further votes on health care legislation until Senator-elect Brown is seated.”

– Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN): “There’s going to be a tendency on the part of our people to be in denial about all this, [but] if you lose Massachusetts and that’s not a wake-up call, there’s no hope of waking up.” “Whenever you have just the furthest left elements of the Dem party attempting to impose their will on the rest of the country — that’s not going to work too well.”

– Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA): If Martha Coakley had won, I believe we could have worked out a reasonable compromise between the House and Senate health care bills…. But our respect for democratic procedures must rule out any effort to pass a health care bill as if the Massachusetts election had not happened.

– Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY): “It’s not the end of the world. Look, we can come back to healthcare.” “It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to step back and say, look, we’re going to pivot to do a jobs thing. We’re going to try to include some healthcare pieces in it.”

Public hostility towards health reform certainly helped propel Brown to victory, but as economist Austin Frakt explains, “[t]he real lesson seems to be less about policy and far more about politics.” After all, Brown doesn’t make a very convincing messenger for opposing the policy behind health reform. As a state senator, Brown voted for Massachusetts 2006’s reform law which, like the Senate and House bills, includes an individual health insurance mandate, insurance exchanges, government affordability credits and insurance regulations. As a result of the law, 98% of Massachusetts residents have health insurance and 79% want the law to continue. Unlike voters in more conservative states, Massachusetts residents don’t fear national reform because it would result in a government take over of health care — they’ve already benefited from the provisions in the Senate health care bill and they support them.

Brown’s campaign tapped into voter frustration with skyrocketing premiums (unlike the national bills, Massachusetts reform did not include cost containment) and the political sausage making process to cast the national reform as an unnecessary effort that could only increase costs for Massachusetts residents. “[W]hy do we need a one size fits all government approach we already did it?” Brown asked voters during a debate with Coakley. “[T]he Federal plan, taking a half trillion from Medicare, why would we go and subsidize the failure of other states – not only would we be paying for our plan, we’d be paying for everyone else – and look at the back door deals – I think people have lost confidence – and I think that we need to go back – I’d work on it,” he said. Brown localized the reform issue. He stripped it of its policy clothes and presented the effort as a hindrance to the state’s successful program. He promised to be the 41st vote against reform because Massachusetts had already passed its own health reform bill, arguing that the state shouldn’t pay for the national effort?

It’s unclear how many voters voted for Brown because of his opposition to the national health reform effort, but at least one poll suggests that enthusiasm for reform was greater than the movement against it. According to Rasmussen Reports election night poll, 63% of Coakley voters said health care was the most important issue in determining their vote, while 52% of Brown voters said it was their top issue.

Since national dissatisfaction with reform coincided with the Senate’s effort to water-down the bill, Democrats shouldn’t distill the legislation further or put it off altogether. “If the Democrats run for cover, if we become pale carbon copies of the opposition, we will lose–and deserve to lose,” Ted Kennedy once said. “The last thing this country needs is two Republican parties.”

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said health care reform will succeed, regardless of the outcome in today’s special senate election in Massachusetts. “Let’s remove all doubt, we will have health care — one way or another,” Pelosi said. “Back to the drawing board means a great big zero for the American people.”

Contrary to an intelligence judgment made in 2007, U.S. intelligence agencies now suspect that Iran never halted work on its nuclear arms program in 2003. “Differences among analysts now focus on whether the country’s supreme leader has given or will soon give orders for full-scale production of nuclear weapons.”

The Washington Post reports that the FBI “illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records.” A DOJ inspector general’s report due out this month “is expected to conclude that the FBI frequently violated the law with its emergency requests.”

President Obama will deliver the State of the Union address on Wednesday, Jan. 27, and release his budget for 2011 on Feb. 1, the White House said yesterday. “The date had been up in the air as the White House and leading Democrats in Congress have been trying to hash out a final health care bill.”

House Democrats rejected “an idea floated by the Obama administration to freeze or cut discretionary spending in 2011,” citing the need to improve the economy before dealing with the deficit. “We cannot invite a W-shaped recession, or an M-shaped recession,” noted Rep. John Oliver (D-MA).

Women are “increasingly better-educated than their husbands and have emerged as the dominant income-provider in one of five marriages,” according to a new Pew Research Center study. “What’s radically changed is that marriage now is a better deal for men,” said report co-author Richard Fry. These trends have been reinforced by the recession, which has “hurt employment of men more than that of women.”

Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-FL) suspended his Senate campaign and traveled to Haiti Saturday to help with relief efforts. “Meek represents the largest Haitian-American community in the country and has a long history of championing the poor Caribbean nation.”

The “Paris Club of international creditors issued an appeal Tuesday for nations owed money by Haiti to cancel the debts to help reconstruction after the devastating earthquake a week ago.” Haiti’s public external debt was nearly $1.885 billion at the end of September 2008.

President Obama will reportedly “ask Congress for $1.35 billion in his 2011 budget proposal to extend an education grant program for states.” Senior administration officials said, however, that the Education Department is still months away from announcing its first round of awards.

And finally: President Obama personally tweeted for the first time yesterday.

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As a U.S. senator, I will sponsor and support legislation to repeal any federal health care takeover passed in 2010, and replace it with real reforms that lower health care costs without growing government. This is not just about simply opposing and repealing the Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda. This is about putting America back on a limited government track. This will require opposing new spending binges, but also turning back some of the mistakes made by President Obama and this Congress, including the pending health care bill.”

Unfortunately, Rubio’s arguments against reform are as specious as his “constitutionality” claims. The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that reform would result in “no significant change” in the federal government’s commitment to health care, and constitutional scholars from across the country argue that the Commerce Clause “permits Congress to regulate commerce, or actions that directly affect economic activity,” such as requiring Americans to purchase health insurance coverage.

The GOP’s health care industry-funded constitutional push is designed to attract campaign cash and get-out-the vote, but should their efforts succeed, the “pledging lawmakers” would be undermining the interests of their constituents. After all, the CBO has estimated that reform would insure as many as 31 million Americans and lower premiums for subsidized Americans in the exchange. A back-of-the envelope analysis conducted by ThinkProgress reveals that on average, the constituencies of the lawmakers and candidates who have signed the Club For Growth’s repeal pledge, have experienced higher than average premium increases, rates of uninsurance and annual percent growth in health care expenditures and insurance market concentration:

While Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has previously refused to acknowledge that Republicans would campaign in future elections on a platform of repealing health reform, Newt Gingrich has predicted that “every Republican running in ‘10 and again in ‘12 will run on an absolute pledge to repeal” the bill. On Wednesday, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) “encouraged candidates to run on full-scale repeal of health reform” and Reps.Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) have indicated that “they will not campaign for full health care repeal but will demand partial repeal, including mandates for health coverage.” At least 14 states have announced that they would put the question of repealing reform on the ballot and 17 Attorneys General are also challenging the legislation.

Nick McClellan designed the table for this post.

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

Officials in Haiti are fearing that “thousands — perhaps more than 100,000 — may have perished” in the deadly earthquake that hit this week. “Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed,” President Rene Preval said. “There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.” Aid agencies have also been hit hard, with Tuesday being “one of the deadliest single days for United Nations employees.” The death toll climbed yesterday as “dozens of aftershocks” hit the nation.

Yesterday, President Obama said his administration would lead “a swift, coordinated and aggressive effort to save lives” in Haiti. The president told his advisers that he wants to know “why it is we’re not doing more.” Former President Bill Clinton, who serves as a U.N. special envoy to Haiti, writes that “small contributions will make a big difference in the aftermath of such destruction.” To make a $10 contribution to the Red Cross recovery effort in Haiti, simply text “HAITI” to 90999. (It will be charged to your cell phone bill.)

The Obama administration has announced that it will temporarily halt the deportations of undocumented Haitians. But “there was no immediate indication that the federal government would grant Haitian nationals Temporary Protected Status.” The Wonk Room’s Andrea Nill makes the case for granting TPS.

A new U.N. survey has found that last year was the most lethal for Afghan civilians since 2001, with the Taliban causing a majority of noncombatant deaths. The report said 2,412 civilians were killed in 2009 — a 14 percent increase from the previous year. The number of civilians killed by NATO forces fell 28 percent.

“President Obama and top Congressional Democrats held a marathon negotiating session” yesterday “in an effort to thrash out agreements on sweeping health care legislation.” Though no firm agreements were produced, Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said in a statement that they had made “significant progress in bridging the remaining gaps.”

Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, admitted yesterday that the bank “engaged in ‘improper behavior in 2006 and 2007 when it made huge bets on a housing downturn while peddling as safe more than $40 billion in securities backed by risky U.S. home loans.” Blankfein made the acknowledgement during the opening hearing of Congress’s Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

President Obama is expected to call today for “taxing about 50 big banks and major financial institutions for at least the next decade to recoup all taxpayer losses from the bailout of Wall Street.” The tax, if enacted, is may raise nearly $90 billion.

“A record 2.8 million households were threatened with foreclosure last year,” up 21 percent from 2008. “That number is expected to rise this year as more unemployed and cash-strapped homeowners fall behind on their mortgages.”

Lawyers for Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Mike Mullen “are recommending a delay of at least a year in beginning the process to repeal the ban on openly gay military service.” However, other Pentagon advisers “argue that lifting the ban would not cause unmanageable problems or divisions among the uniformed military.”

The Justice Department will announce today that they are “beginning a major campaign against banks and mortgage brokers suspected of discriminating against minority applicants in lending.” The new unit “will focus exclusively on unfair lending practices.” The department “is hiring at least four lawyers and an economist for the new unit, while about half a dozen current staff members will transfer into it.”

And finally: While full body scanners at airports have been generating significant controversy, one group is throwing its full weight behind the devices. The American Association for Nude Recreation released a press release headlined, “Airport Scanning that ‘Takes It Off‘ is Good for America,” saying that the screenings are “completely worth it.”

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In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), the attorneys generals from South Carolina, Washington, Michigan, Texas, Colorado, Alabama, North Dakota, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Utah, Florida, Idaho and South Dakota “wrote that they consider the [Nebraska] provision ‘constitutionally flawed’ and demanded that it be stricken from the final bill.”

Yesterday, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal explaining “Why the Health-Care Bills Are Unconstitutional.” “The policy issues may be coming to an end, but the legal issues are certain to continue because key provisions of this dangerous legislation are unconstitutional,” he wrote, and went on to challenge the constitutionality of the individual mandate, the so-called sweet heart deal for Nebraska, and the requirements for states to establish health insurance exchanges and insurance regulations.

The effort may prove a strong political organizing tool for conservative activists, but the legal reasoning has little support beyond the right fringe of the Republican party and the health care industry. Several weeks ago, the New York Times reported, “The states where the [constitutional] amendment has been introduced are also places where the health care industry has spent heavily on political contributions.” The industry has also contributed heavily to the campaigns of at least 7 of the 13 attorney generals threatening to sue the federal government over the Nebraska provision. (Campaign finance data was not readily accessible for the other 6 attorneys generals.)

An analysis conducted by the Wonk Room of available campaign finance disclosures for AGs from South Carolina, Washington, Michigan, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Utah and Idaho reveals that the health industry contributed heavily to their campaigns. For instance, Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett (who is also running for Governor) accepted some $24,300 from the health care industry for his campaigns, including $10,300 from Pfizer PAC, $3,500 from Aetna Inc. PAC, and $2,500 from United Health Group Inc. Read the full analysis here.

Allen Quist, a Republican who is seeking to defeat Rep. Tim Walz in southern Minnesota’s First Congressional District, told attendees of the Wabasha County Republicans Christmas Party in mid-December that beating the “radical” liberals in Washington, D.C., is a bigger battle than beating terrorism.

“Our country is being destroyed. Every generation has had to fight the fight for freedom… Terrorism? Yes. That’s not the big battle,” he said. “The big battle is in D.C. with the radicals. They aren’t liberals. They are radicals. Obama, Pelosi, Walz: They’re not liberals, they’re radicals. They are destroying our country.”

Watch Quist’s full speech:

On NBC’s Meet the Press yesterday, White House homeland security adviser John Brennen remarked, “I think we have to remember who the enemy here is. The enemy is al Qaeda. And as this finger-pointing is going on in Washington here, these partisan politics and agendas, quite frankly, I find it very disappointing that people would use this issue, issue of tremendous import of national security and forget that it is al Qaeda that is killing our citizens.”

They just don’t get it. The system didn’t “work” here. Far from it! It is insulting that The Obama administration would make such a claim, but then again, these are the same weak-kneed liberals who have recently tried to bring Guantanamo Bay terrorists right here to Michigan!

In fact, Napolitano said that “the system” worked “once the incident occurred” — referring only to the post-incident response — a comment similar to ones made by the Bush administration. She has since made clear that the system of preventing such attacks “did not work.” “If you agree that we need a Governor who will stand up the Obama/Pelosi efforts to weaken our security,” Hoekstra writes, “please make a most generous contribution of $25, $50, $100 or even $250 to my campaign.”

Though Nancy Pelosi and friends have tried to call “death panels” the “lie of the year,” this type of rationing – what the CBO calls “reduc[ed] access to care” and “diminish[ed] quality of care” – is precisely what I meant when I used that metaphor.

This should sound familiar to those who have been closely following Palin’s year-and-a-half in the spotlight. After Palin made the jaw-dropping claim that Alaska’s proximity to Russia counts as foreign policy experience, the McCain-Palin campaign used the “metaphor” excuse to defend the then-Governor:

A senior campaign aide who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity admitted that Palin’s knowledge of Russia may be limited to the way someone from Miami might obtain a general feel for Latin America.

“It is very much being able to look off the tip of Alaska,” the aide said. “Metaphorically, I’m talking about.”

Despite how metaphorical, allegorical, or analytical people attempt to make Palin sound, the truth is that her limitless string of gaffes and missteps are simply nonsensical.

As CAP President and CEO John Podesta noted, health care reform “would extend health care coverage to a record 31 million Americans who are currently uninsured, bringing the total insured population to 94 percent.” However, every single Republican opposed the legislation. RNC Chairman Michael Steele immediately put out a statement blasting the legislation as a “gift that keeps on taking”:

This morning, as millions of Americans prepared to gather with their families in celebration of Christmas, President Obama and Harry Reid gathered with their liberal allies in celebration of government. Mr. Reid and company honored President Obama’s Christmas wish for increased federal control and passed their government-run health care experiment out of the Senate. [...]

As we move forward, America can look forward to watching Nancy Pelosi conduct the arm-twisting needed to convince her most liberal colleagues that the Senate version is the best Trojan horse possible to hide a true single payer system, which is what this debate has always been about. This Christmas, the Democrats and President Obama have given America the one gift that keeps on taking.

Conservatives have been aggressively trying to portray health care reform as an assault on Christmas and Christian values. Fox News even said that senators voting against reform are doing so because they understand “the true meaning of Christmas.” Today on the floor, Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) said that Americans would be getting “a lump of coal” this Christmas. Apparently, this meme is catching on. TPM notes that today on C-SPAN, a caller — “Bunny” from Kansas — was so upset over the health care bill’s passage that she said she would be taking down all her Christmas decorations. “I have taken my Christmas wreath off my house. I have taken all the lights down,” she said. “This is supposed to be a nation under God, and it isn’t. They absolutely have ruined Christmas.” Watch it (at approximately 45:00):

After the passage of the historic bill, President Obama said, “As I’ve said before, these are not small reforms; these are big reforms. If passed, this will be the most important piece of social policy since the Social Security Act in the 1930s, and the most important reform of our health care system since Medicare passed in the 1960s. And what makes it so important is not just its cost savings or its deficit reductions. It’s the impact reform will have on Americans who no longer have to go without a checkup or prescriptions that they need because they can’t afford them; on families who no longer have to worry that a single illness will send them into financial ruin; and on businesses that will no longer face exorbitant insurance rates that hamper their competitiveness.”

Significantly, neither DeMint nor Ensign cite a single judge, justice or reputable constitutional scholar who believes that health reform is unconstitutional.  Instead, they rely entirely on a study by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, a radical “tenther” organization which has endorsed the view that Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the federal minimum wage, and the federal ban on workplace discrimination and whites-only lunch counters are all unconstitutional.  Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), rebuts DeMint and Ensign’s constitutional claim by citing numerous constitutional scholars — including right-wing law professor Jonathan Adler — who all agree that health reform is constitutional. Moreover, as ThinkProgress has previously explained, even ultra-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia disagrees with the tenther attack on health reform.

Sadly, DeMint and Ensign’s attempt to change the meaning of the Constitution by invoking a constitutional point of order is an all too familiar tactic. As CQ reports, Republicans often invoke this procedure to claim that bills they don’t like must therefore be unconstitutional. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) recently invoked the procedure to claim that a $200,000 federal grant to an Omaha, Neb. museum somehow violated the constitution. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) used it to protest a bill to enfranchise D.C. residents.

Raising a constitutional point of order is also the first step to invoking the so-called “nuclear option,” an elaborate set of procedural maneuvers Republicans dreamed up while they were still in the majority, that effectively declare the filibuster unconstitutional.  Indeed, despite the fact that Ensign and DeMint now claim the right to filibuster anything the majority does, both senators believed the filibuster must be unconstitutional when it was being used against them.  Ensign claimed that the Senate has a “constitutional obligation” to give President Bush’s most radical judicial nominees an “up-or-down” vote, and DeMint had even harsher words for Democratic senators who opposed majority rule:

The obstructionists should go to the Senate floor, make their arguments, allow senators to draw their conclusions on her nomination and then let us vote. If their arguments are so strong, they should be able to convince a majority to agree. Otherwise, they are simply smearing the integrity of a highly respected jurist to score political points against the president, at the expense of vandalizing the Constitution. . . .

There is a reason Americans elected George W. Bush and a large Republican majority in Congress. The majority of Americans trusted our judgment on judicial nominees. There is also a reason Democrats are in the minority. Most Americans did not trust them to make these decisions.

Now that DeMint and Ensign are in the minority, however, it simply must be the case that the Constitution protects minority obstructionism–and that bills opposed by the minority are unconstitutional.