8:09 EST: Dodd, presiding over the Senate, said the motion passed, smattering of applause. Motion is agreed to. Clerk is now reporting the bill and amendment.

And that's it for the night. Debate will begin after Thanksgiving, plus amendments, then moving on to the final cloture motion and a final vote.

8:04 EST: Cloture passes 60-39. Debate will start after Thanksgiving.

7:57 EST: Voting continuing.

7:56 EST: Clerk reading cloture motion.

The question is: Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the motion to proceed shall be brought to a close. Clerk is calling the roll.

Voting now.

7:55 EST: Vote starting 5 minutes early.

7:54 EST: Absence of a quorum noted by Reid, and the roll is being called. Vote coming soon!

7:44 EST: The American people want us to start over. All it would take is just one on the other side of the aisle to not end the debate, but change the debate.

And he's yielded.

Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) is up.

My friend, the minority leader, has had since Wednesday to read the bill. Obviously he hasn't done so.

We debate the right to live free of disease and death by giving health care for all. The road has started many times, never been completed. Merged bills have never been done before. We couldn't have got here without the help of many Senators.

As a matter of principle, that I respect, the senior Senator from Arkansas insisted we have time to read the bill. All Senators have now had ample time. That is why we are voting tonight.

I invite Republicans to join the right side of history. Around dining room tables, families are agonizing over what to sacrifice next to afford health care. Employers are wondering whether they can afford to provide health care. Americans need reform.

Debate is constant, but the only place where silence is evened considered is the Senate. Now, finally, we have the opportunity to bring this great deliberation to this body. That and nothing more is what this vote does.

A yes vote says this issue is important and the Senate should at least talk about it.

Some Republicans would like Americans to think voting to debate the bill is voting to pass the bill. Tonight's vote is only the beginning of debate. It's clear Republicans have no problem talking about health care on TV, at town hall meetings, on the radio, yet now that we have the legislation to debate, to amend, to build on, will they refuse to debate?

If we refuse to let the Senate do its job, what are we doing here? What do we fear? And who's voice to you speak for? In who's interest do you vote?

Certainly debating reform can't be more difficult than American deciding to pay their mortgage or medical bills. It can't be more upsetting than having an insurance company take away your coverage when you need it the most.

Kennedy once said let us not be afraid of debate or discussion, let us encourage it.

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Colbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical Humor

Stephen Colbert gives NBC's Chuck Todd a political beating...errrr...I mean hair pulling over Todd's idiotic response to Glenn Greenwald's word boarding of his Villager argument that an investigation of the Bush administration over prisoner abuse treatment would turn into a beltway weenie food fight and America couldn't handle it...

Greenwald: Isn't the best thing to do..to say to a prosecutor, "Were crimes committed...have this be treated like every other accusation of crime?"

Todd: Glenn, in a perfect world, yes. If you could guarantee me that we could keep this debate off of television...

Todd is a TV reporter, but wants to keep an investigation off of TV. I mean, this is the state of our media, folks. It just might be enlightening. Hey, just keep running the Gates/Obama story over and over again. That's what America wants. Not truth about torture or prisoner abuses...

Download | play    Download | play   (h/t Heather)

On Sunday's Q&A, host Brian Lamb sat down with National Review columnist Kathleen Parker to discuss her take on the comings and goings in Washington DC.  My buddy Heather noted this odd little bit of unsound morality and logic.  Parker wrote a scathing piece on McClellan's book What Happened for the NRO, coming thisclose to likening him to a serial killer (No, I'm not kidding, read it yourself).  See, for Parker, McClellan has reached the apex of immorality, because he listened to the Bush administration's plans, apparently put up no fight (of course, this is according to the White House, whose veracity should have dubious credibility) and then said nothing until he left the White House and wrote a book.  

Don't get me wrong, if I had been in Scott McClellan's position, you could be damn sure I would be speaking up loudly and longly while in the White House.  And I'd probably be out of a job and smeared within an inch of my life by the Karl Rove machine (see how they treated Paul O'Neill as an example).  But for Parker, the fact that he left the White House and then spoke up makes him more deplorable than those he spoke up against. 

Parker: ... I've met Scott and he is, comes across as just the sweetest, nicest fellow. I took great umbrage at this primarily because, whether the... you know, if... if he were... if he sat in those meetings where evidence was being trumped up and people are actually dying and never so much as cleared his throat or raised an eyebrow--which is what I'm told by everyone in the White House--then I think that he is guilty of something much greater than whatever he presents to the public in this book. You don't sit there and listen to what you now consider lies and know... you walk out the door. An honorable man walks out the door. And you can go and call a press conference if you are the Press Secretary of the President of the United States. You can call a press conference. You can walk out and get a book contract that day, but you don't sit through it for years and years and then say 'well, I think I'll go get a book contract and you know present basically my notes that I've taken all these years knowing that these people were doing wrong.'  So I simply don't trust a person like that.

But you'll trust the ones that did the lying and put the Americans in harm's way and continue to do so?  They are actually LESS offensive to your mind than someone whose conscience was so burdened that he left the job and spoke out against what happened?

Methinks someone needs their moral compass re-calibrated.

Transcripts below the fold: (thanks to Heather)

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Noted comedian and long time civil rights advocate Dick Gregory shook the house at last weekends' State of the Black Union. Gregory did so numerous times that afternoon, including this bit where he "apologizes" on behalf of all African Americans for "confusing" the first Black President on just who is and who is not Black. As with all brilliant satirists, Gregory spares no one, least of all those in attendance.

Download | play Download | play [YouTube]

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

Ah...the Doughy Pantload strikes again. Speaking in front of the Heritage Foundation (because, honestly, who else could sit through this tripe?) to pimp his latest book, Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg tries again to prove Moynihan wrong, not only by coming up with his own facts, but his own definitions as well.

The primary definition that Goldberg ignores for his own version is "Fascism." In Doughy Pantload World, "fascism" means "something bad". This is something I've suspected for many years about conservatives: They don't actually know the definitions of the epithets they like to throw out to dismiss and demean the left. They just think it means "something bad." For example:

To sort of start the story, the reason why we see fascism as a thing of the right is because fascism was originally a form of right-wing socialism. Mussolini was born a socialist, he died a socialist, he never abandoned his love of socialism, he was one of the most important socialist intellectuals in Europe and was one of the most important socialist activists in Italy, and the only reason he got dubbed a fascist and therefore a right-winger is because he supported World War I.

Um, actually, not so much. Mussolini was dubbed a fascist because he founded the Fascist Party, you big, fact-ignoring dope.

Jonah's hatred of Hillary Clinton knows no rational bounds (the original sub-title was "The Totalitarian Temptation From Mussolini to Hillary Clinton"--Mussolini as an American politician--who knew?) and he steals liberally from Naomi Klein to dive head first into the Godwin abyss with fantastical allusions to 1984 and some Big Brother bleak bureaucratic scenario of DMVs with Jumbotrons with nanny-state advisories on breastfeeding, based on Hillary Clinton's It Takes A Village.

The dizzying logic of it all just shows you why if Jonah Goldberg is one of the great thinkers on the right (and certainly, he's has prominent enough platforms from which to spew this tripe to argue that point), the right is bankrupt of intellectual honesty and comprehension.

(Update: BG thanks her fellow liberal bloggers for this.)

Download | play    Download | play   (h/t Logan)

Obviously, the Republican leadership has gotten to Sen. Kit Bond with the message: You're. Not. Helping. Our. Cause. by likening waterboarding to swimming.   So Bond goes on C-Span's Washington Journal and tries to clarify his comment with increasing incoherence. 

Apparently, he meant that there was as much variety in waterboarding techniques as there are swimming strokes--still not helping, Senator Bond.  The kind of waterboarding the Japanese did to our soldiers in WWII--bad...the kind we did (?--have we stopped?) to our soldiers in training--fine.  Not particularly sure that's helpful either, Sen. Bond.  Unfortunately for those of us who actually understand the issue at hand, he doesn't specify which kind we've done to detainees like Maher Arar, or if it's acceptable.  That glaring omission is certainly helpful to the Republicans torture apologist platform. 

However, he does feel a blanket banning on waterboarding--such as the one in the Geneva Conventions that we signed--is bad, because it then prevents us from using it in an extreme national emergency--the Jack Bauer scenario raising its ugly head again.  Bingo, Sen. Bond!  You found the party line.  How amoral of you.

On Tuesday's "Washington Journal" a caller from Florida asks former Reagan Justice Dept. official and current torture-apologist David Rivkin to volunteer to be water boarded so he can decide whether or not it should considered torture.

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

Let's hear what a different former Reagan Justice Dept. official has to say.

(guest blogged by Bill W.)

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CSpan's Washington Journal had Flynt Leverett on to discuss his latest article in Esquire Magazine " The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran That the White House Doesn't Want You to Know"

In the years after 9/11, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann worked at the highest levels of the Bush administration as Middle East policy experts for the National Security Council. Mann conducted secret negotiations with Iran. Leverett traveled with Colin Powell and advised Condoleezza Rice. They each played crucial roles in formulating policy for the region leading up to the war in Iraq. But when they left the White House, they left with a growing sense of alarm -- not only was the Bush administration headed straight for war with Iran, it had been set on this course for years. That was what people didn't realize. It was just like Iraq, when the White House was so eager for war it couldn't wait for the UN inspectors to leave. The steps have been many and steady and all in the same direction. And now things are getting much worse. We are getting closer and closer to the tripline, they say. ... (read on)

You may recall Flynt Leverett from when he and his wife Hillary Mann, who co-wrote the now infamous redacted NYT Op-Ed and its corresponding "What We Wanted to Tell You About Iran" which linked to already published sources for all of the redacted info the White House was desperately trying to keep hidden, which Raw Story followed up on with their "The redacted Iran op-ed revealed." Much of Leverett and Mann's work helped form the basis for an amazing PBS Frontline Special which aired Tues night, " Showdown with Iran" which you can watch online. Look for us to be bringing you more on that later here at C&L.

Off the Cuff:

"When has France ever been a friend to America? They have never been a friend to America." - Bush-loving C-SPAN caller this morning.

Umm, when they helped fund the American Revolution?

When they gave us the Statue of Liberty?

When the French Resistance helped us win World War II?

Remember, caller: Friends don't let friends drive drunk.

Thanks http://www.suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/