Ian Black and Richard Norton-Taylor in The Guardian say AQ Central in Pakistan is actually not in such hot shape:

Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida is under heavy pressure in its strongholds in Pakistan’s remote tribal areas and is finding it difficult to attract recruits or carry out spectacular operations in western countries, according to government and independent experts monitoring the organisation.

Speaking to the Guardian in advance of tomorrow’s eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, western counter-terrorism officials and specialists in the Muslim world said the organisation faced a crisis that was severely affecting its ability to find, inspire and train willing fighters.

Its activity is increasingly dispersed to “affiliates” or “franchises” in Yemen and North Africa, but the links of local or regional jihadi groups to the centre are tenuous; they enjoy little popular support and successes have been limited.

That’s via Andrew Exum, who highlights the fact that contrary to some skepticism that he and I share about the drone attacks, that the article says they’ve played a role in this. I’ll take the overall picture they paint as evidence that we need to avoid doing anything too panicky in the region and certainly that we shouldn’t take too seriously the idea that somehow the Taliban is one step away from taking over in Islamabad. But as long as the Pakistani government actually wants to clamp down on radical groups, which has been the case in recent months, then it seems that we can help them be reasonably effective in doing so.

Andrew Samwick has some questions about the idea that everyone agrees on eighty percent of what needs to be done:

I broke in a new plasma television on the President’s speech this evening, so I couldn’t help but think that he looked and sounded great. The line that jumped out at me was, “there is agreement in this chamber on about eighty percent of what needs to be done.” If that is really the case, then why not pass the legislation that specified exactly that eighty percent? Everyone could declare victory and go home. What is in the other twenty percent that is essential to the President but on which there is not broad agreement in Congress?

Either the statement is not true, or some of what the President is pushing for — the individual mandate, the employer pay-or-play, the measures to cut costs in Medicare, or the Medicare-for-a-premium public option — is not subject to that broad agreement. I think the public option and employer pay-or-play are the most contentious, and I did not hear anything in this speech that set the stage for easier negotiations on those topics. That is still to come, and it will likely happen in a conference committee, complete with all of the backroom deals that we’ve come to expect from Capitol Hill.

Several points:

One: Members of the minority may think something is a good idea, but not want to vote for it anyway out of political opportunism.

Two: Members of the majority may want to pass some stuff that not everyone agrees with; after all they won the election!

Three: A lot of what’s in the 20 percent amounts to disagreement about how to pay for stuff in the 80 percent, so you can’t do the 80 percent without resolving the 20 percent.

Four: A lot of folks who might agree with the vast majority of the bill are nonetheless saying they won’t vote for it unless the public option is dropped from the bill, thus holding the 80 percent hostage to maybe 5 percent of the total package.

And that’s the problem.

Chris Dodd bucked expectations and decided to stay in charge of the Senate Banking Committee. Then Tom Harkin further bucked expectations and decided to depart from his perch at the Agriculture Committee (thought to be exactly where an Iowa Senator wants to be) and take over the HELP Committee. That leaves Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas as the chair of Agriculture, which should be good for her re-election bid.

But is it good for America? Brad Johnson notes that Lincoln is a very strident opponent of climate change legislation, calling even the post-Collin Peterson version of the legislation a “total non-starter.” And the left will have basically no leverage over her; she’s at real risk of losing her seat to a Republican, and Barack Obama is very unpopular in Arkansas. That said, the alternative to this scenario was Tim Johnson heading up Banking, so this is arguably a superior outcome. In terms of core agriculture policy issues, switching from Harkin at the top to Lincoln at the top will probably mostly make things bad in a different way. Policy less oriented toward the interests of people who grow corn, and more oriented toward the interests of Tyson Foods—purveyors of fine fast food chicken products.

To revisit last night’s action, the President said this:

THE PRESIDENT: There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms — the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

REP JOE WILSON: You lie! (Boos.)

THE PRESIDENT: It’s not true. And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up — under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place. (Applause.)

Brendan Nyhan bends over backwards to construct an interpretation of the situation such that Rep Wilson is merely being highly misleading rather than telling an outright falsehood:

Obama is clearly referring to the false claim that health care reform would provide free health insurance to illegal immigrants. Many people may interpret Wilson’s outburst as a defense of this claim (it’s impossible to know what he was thinking). However, as Rob correctly points out, Obama’s reforms would apply to everyone — including illegal immigrants — who purchases coverage through health insurance exchanges, including from a proposed government insurance program known as the public option. If you define the public option as insuring someone and describe it as a reform, then Obama’s statement could be seen as misleading and Wilson’s point could be seen as more supportable.

(wikimedia)

In other words, though the bills would prevent undocumented immigrants from receiving any taxpayer assistance in purchasing health insurance, the proposals on the table don’t do anything special to prevent an undocumented immigrant from buying health insurance with his own money. To characterize this as “insur[ing] illegal immigrants” strikes me as about on a par with claiming that Obama’s health care plans give ibuprofen to illegal immigrants. After all, nothing in the bill stops illegal immigrants from buying ibuprofen in a store! And the very same FDA regulations that assure citizens and legal residents and tourists of the safety of ibuprofen will also benefit illegal immigrants.