NY Times :

Former Senator Fred Thompson, who now plays a district attorney on "Law & Order," told Fox News today that he'll make a decision in the coming months about whether to jump into the field of Republican candidates vying for the 2008 presidential nomination.

"I'm going to wait and see what happens," Mr. Thompson said. "I want to see my colleagues on the campaign trial, what they say, what they emphasize, whether they can carry the ball next November." [..]

Mr. Thompson, who served as a senator from Tennessee from 1994 until 2003, said he was leaving the door open for a return to the political stage.

Thompson has had a very colorful career in Washington. From Wikipedia:

He was the campaign manager for Senator Howard Baker's successful re-election campaign in 1972, which led to a close personal friendship with Baker, and he served as co-chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee in its investigation of the Watergate scandal, (1973-1974). He was responsible for Baker's asking one of the questions that is said to have led directly to the downfall of President Richard Nixon-"What did the President know, and when did he know it?" Also, Thompson's voice has become immortalized in recordings of the Watergate proceedings, asking the key question, "Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President?"

In 1977, Thompson took on a Tennessee Parole Board case that ultimately toppled Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton from power on charges of selling pardons. The scandal became the subject of a book and a movie titled Marie (1985) in which Thompson played himself, supposedly because the producers were unable to find a professional actor who could play him plausibly.

I can imagine the right wingers with their "socialized medicine = bad" meme just having their heads spin on this one.

NY Times (h/t ysbaddaden)

A majority of Americans say the federal government should guarantee health insurance to every American, especially children, and are willing to pay higher taxes to do it, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. (.pdf)

While the war in Iraq remains the overarching issue in the early stages of the 2008 campaign, access to affordable health care is at the top of the public's domestic agenda, ranked far more important than immigration, cutting taxes or promoting traditional values.[..]

Americans showed a striking willingness in the poll to make tradeoffs to guarantee health insurance for all, including paying as much as $500 more in taxes a year and forgoing future tax cuts.

But the same divisions that doomed the last effort at creating universal health insurance, under the Clinton administration, are still apparent. Americans remain divided, largely along party lines, over whether the government should require everyone to participate in a national health care plan, and over whether the government would do a better job than the private insurance industry in providing coverage.

John Dean (Conservatives Without Conscience) writes in FindLaw that Democrats can't waver here: (h/t JR)

"It has been two decades in the making, but this is the year Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court's most outspoken dissenter, could emerge as a leader of a new conservative majority," reports David Savage, legal reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Savage says that the Court will soon issue rulings relating to race, religion, abortion and campaign finance "where Scalia's views may now represent the majority."

David Savage's analysis is a reminder that the High Court is closer than ever to a conservative tipping point. Today, the conservative bloc consists of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito. The center-left justices are John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy is the swing vote - and often a right-leaning one. However, Kennedy has been surprisingly liberal on issues such as gay rights - as represented by his opinions in Romer v. Evans and Lawrence v. Texas. In addition, he voted not to overrule Roe in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

What if Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg or Breyer should leave the Court during the remainder of the Bush Presidency? Bush would very likely opt to select another conservative, and create a conservative majority on the Court. This prospect makes conservatives salivate, and liberals shudder.
[..]If fate were to open one of these center-left seats on the Court, Senate Democrats should immediately advise the President that they will only consent to a nominee who is a moderate.
Indeed, they should make crystal clear that if Bush, a lame duck president, sends another rock-ribbed conservative nominee who will clearly tilt the Court, they will leave the seat vacant until the voters have spoken as to whether they want a solid conservative Court. (A vacant seat would certainly raise the already high stakes of the 2008 presidential race, and while it would put a burden on the other justices, it would only be temporary.)

Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd came out throwing hay-makers at John Howard for his viciously insipid statements against Obama. Howard said that al-Qaeda wants Barack Obama to win the election. The Democratic Party should view this clip over and over again. Update: Full transcript here .

Download | play Download | play

The Australian:

Mr Rudd said Mr Howard should be censured over his comment yesterday that terrorist network al-Qaeda would be hoping for a Democratic candidate to win next year's US presidential election.---It also accuses Mr Howard of “gross insensitivity” for lecturing the United States on Iraq when the war has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 US servicemen and women.

Mr Rudd demanded that Mr Howard withdraw his comments unreservedly.

(h/t to Scarce for the vid) (transcript below the fold)

Continue reading »

MediaCitizen:

All told, the (president's proposed fiscal year 2008) budget calls for $668.2 million for the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency that supervises all US government non-military propaganda.

At the same time Bush's budget proposes steep cuts to federal funds for public broadcasting by nearly 25%. According to the Association of Public Television Stations, the Bush budget would cut up to $145 million from the $460 million proposed FY 2008 budget for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting.

The amount allocated to the BBG is a 3.8 percent increase from the agency's 2007 budget with monies specifically "targeted to the war on terror." These tax dollars would flow to government mouthpieces including the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Alhurra, Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting.

NY Times:

Gov. Charlie Crist announced plans on Thursday to abandon the touch-screen voting machines that many of Florida's counties installed after the disputed 2000 presidential election. The state will instead adopt a system of casting paper ballots counted by scanning machines in time for the 2008 presidential election.

Voting experts said Florida's move, coupled with new federal voting legislation expected to pass this year, could be the death knell for the paperless electronic touch-screen machines. If as expected the Florida Legislature approves the $32.5 million cost of the change, it would be the nation's biggest repudiation yet of touch-screen voting, which was widely embraced after the 2000 recount as a state-of-the-art means of restoring confidence that every vote would count.

[..]"Florida is like a synonym for election problems; it's the Bermuda Triangle of elections," said Warren Stewart, policy director of VoteTrust USA, a nonprofit group that says optical scanners are more reliable than touch screens. "For Florida to be clearly contemplating moving away from touch screens to the greatest extent possible is truly significant."

Michael Collins of Scoop Independent News reports that the new Ohio Secretary of State (the other location of voter irregularities during 2004) will make sure that the sins of Blackwell not revisit her state again.

The Blue State: Doesn't "surge" mean "escalate"?  I think it does and it's just more blatant propagandizing. When does "accountability" begin?

DownWithTyranny! Our pathological press helped George W. Bush lie us into Iraq

Intrepid Liberal Journal: Looking at 2008 I like how Gore fits

The Arabist: “My Name is Rachel Corrie” has been cancelled in Canada. No surprises as to why...

Conservative Truths: The number of households with hunger is higher during conservative presidencies

Boing Boing: Gettin' on the good foot...James Brown vintage videos and more

The Revealer: The “A” section of the December 7 edition of the Los Angeles Times featured five articles on the intriguing intersection of religion, sex and politics. Unfortunately, none of the reporters or editors involved in the stories seemed to make the connection -- or grasp the import.

LiberalOasis: Senator Ron Wyden has proposed a universal health insurance plan. It's a critical issue concerning something we haven't heard much about for the past six years: The Common Good

Empire Burlesque: Presidential tyranny untamed by election defeat (h/t House of the Rising sons)

TalkLeft: Can congress end the war in Iraq?

Lean Left: The Bible against itself

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: HillCountryGal...Arkansas Times Blogs...Truly Equal...Senate 2008 Guru: Following the Races

He's a long shot, but you got to love his tenacity...and here's hoping that he can help shape the national debate more beyond the sloganeering and wedge issues that the right loves to distract everyone with.

Monsters & Critics:

Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a passionate opponent of the Iraq war, has officially tossed his hat into the 2008 Presidential bid in the democratic party.

Kucinich announced his second bid for president on Tuesday, fueled by his frustration with the Democrat's anemic effort to put an end to the Iraq war.

"I am not going to stand by and watch thousands more of our brave, young men and women killed in Iraq," Kucinich said to applause from a crowd gathered at City Hall. "We Democrats were put back in power to bring some sanity back to our nation.

ABC News:

Democratic jockeying for the White House in 2008 intensified on Sunday with Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh taking the first official step toward a run and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton gauging support among fellow New York lawmakers.

Bayh said he would set up an exploratory committee to raise money and help assess his prospects. He plans to decide over the upcoming holidays whether to seek the Democratic nomination and announce his decision early next year.

[..]Clinton, who easily won re-election to a second term on Nov. 7, "is reaching out to her colleagues in the New York delegation and asking for their advice and counsel and their support if she decides to make a run," a top adviser, Howard Wolfson, told The Associated Press.