No, this isn't Representative Deal, who's resigning to pursue a governorship. This is a Democrat doing the same thing, but what makes it notable is his vow to return to DC specifically to vote against ObamaCare.

Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), who opposed the House version of the healthcare reform bill last year, will make sure to take a break from his campaign for governor to travel to Washington to vote against the final version of the bill.

...

Lawmakers seeking higher office are prone to missing roll call votes as they hit the campaign trail but Davis's office told The Hill that he intends to make the trek north from Alabama to cast his vote against the legislation -- and his party's leadership.

"Congressman Davis will be present for the HC vote and he is a no," Davis's communications director, Addie Whisenant, wrote in an email.

Davis was the first member of the Congressional Black Caucus and the first Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee to call for Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) to step down as chairman of the powerful panel.

Davis is one of 23 House Democrats to vote against healthcare reform and climate change.

In announcing his no vote last year on healthcare, Davis said, "We risk a disaster if we get this wrong."

He's black?

Racist.

Posted by: Ace at 11:55 AM | Comments (29)
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Glenn Beck will have him for a full hour tomorrow.

Now, Massa says he'll resign by 5 o'clock today (Eastern). He was asked if he could un-resign; he says he can't rescind a letter of resignation. Of course he can. And if he does, Pelosi needs 217, not 216.

But he won't. The Democrats are threatening, obviously, to out his closeted-but-only-barely-so gay stuff and he won't go through that.

Oh: Reporters are now referring vaguely to two "incidents" which happened during Massa's Naval career.

Several points:

Democrats obviously knew of this stuff long before, but must have forgotten to mention it to us.

The media would never peddle the thin stuff about whatever happened in the Navy if this were a Democrat in good standing. They've got the go-code from their masters, and so they're treating Massa... like a Republican.

Backstory: I'm rewriting this post because Drew already got to most of it. Below the fold, the backstory on Massa. more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:44 AM | Comments (52)
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Interesting photo essay on the real men and women of Explosive Ordnance Disposal.

Not everyone was impressed with the movie because of the inaccuracies in it (I haven't seen it yet). Any movie about a subject you know something about is going to provoke that "Really? That's what you think it's really like?" sense.

At the lest, hopefully people will come away with an appreciation for the work these brave men and women* do.

Also, a stark reminder that not all of these heroes comes home alive to their families.

From Iraq to Afghanistan, Marine sergeant Chris Eckard disarmed hundreds of bombs.

He had a highly dangerous job - and loved it, friends said when he was buried Friday in his hometown of Hickory.

Cool-headed and careful, Eckard, 30, had a knack for spotting and defusing explosives in war zones.

After four tours in Iraq, he went to Afghanistan in October and was headed home soon to his wife and two small sons near Jacksonville. He planned to switch from the battlefield to the classroom and teach other Marines about bomb-hunting.

Rest in Peace Gunnery Sergeant and thank you.

*I didn't realize that women served in EOD units, they do and they are wounded and killed as well. May God bless them all.

Thanks to "Drillanwr" in the comments for the information.

Posted by: DrewM at 11:20 AM | Comments (69)
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At least that's what Representative Suzanne Kosmas of Florida seems to say.

The rising costs of our health care system put us on an unsustainable path that is hurting job growth, overwhelming the federal budget, and creating debt for future generations. The House bill does not do enough to slow the growth of health care costs or to rein in spending on care. That is why, after careful consideration I decided that I could not in good conscience support this bill.

Fiscally responsible health care reform is attainable, but we must improve upon the House bill. This requires reform that continues to provide choice, does not change benefits to veterans and seniors, and truly rewards quality outcomes and moves us away from the fee-for-service system that rewards quantity alone. There must be real incentives to maintain healthy lifestyles and to provide health insurance plans that are more cost-effective. Finally, any legislation must also make a serious effort to control waste, fraud, and abuse.

Additionally, we should hold insurance companies accountable by preventing them from denying coverage based on preexisting conditions, by eliminating life-time caps on coverage, and by taking steps to lower premiums. However, in the long run, these reforms will be in vain if we don't take significant steps to rein in rising costs, and the House bill did not achieve this goal.

Not sure what sorts of fixes she has in mind. If the reconciliation fix actually reduced costs, that would take it further away from progressives' dreams, which is the opposite, I thought, of what reconciliation is being promised to do.

Suzanne Kosmas is one of the nine previous "no" votes Nancy Pelosi is asking to join her Suicide Squad. And it would be suicide, as her district went McCain by 2 and Bush by 10.

Oh: Note she is specifically addressing the House bill above, not the Senate bill, which is what she'd be voting on, if Pelosi calls the vote. I didn't make that clear.

Whatever "fixes" she'd have in mind in reconciliation would be the opposite of what the persuadable progressives would want.

Posted by: Ace at 10:39 AM | Comments (75)
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Alright, I've found the video. This was on the Chris Matthews show.

Presumably, Rather was finishing "couldn't sell watermelons to save his life", but he was interrupted.

Hat tip to iOwnTheWorld.

More to come...

More: Left Coast Rebel has the transcript:

"When you talk about a triumph though, part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama's leadership and the Republicans are making a case, a lot of independents will buy this argument, listen he just hasn't been...look at the health care bill, it was his number one priority, it took him forever to get it through and he had to compromise it to death and a version of ...listen, he's a nice person, he's very articulate, this was going to be used against him. But He couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him if you gave him a State Trooper to flag down traffic..."

Is that an expression? "Couldn't sell X if you gave him a state trooper to flag down traffic."?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:20 AM | Comments (237)
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Via the Weekly Standard, Illinois Dem Dan Lipinski says it's not gonna happen:

Asked if the congressman is "open to voting for a health care bill that lacks the Stupak amendment," Lipinski's spokesman Nathaniel Zimmer replied in an email to THE WEEKLY STANDARD: "No. Congressman Lipinski will not vote for a health care bill that provides federal funding for abortion."

In addition to Stupak and Lipinski, Congressman Jim Oberstar of Minnesota has said that he will not vote for the health care bill if it lacks the Stupak amendment: "I will not vote for a health care bill that doesn't have the House abortion language in it," Oberstar told Congressional Quarterly on February 24.

By my count, if even two House Dems switch their yes votes to no, Pelosi can't get to 216 (217, if Massa actually rescinds his resignation). Stupak has already said he won't be the guy. And Ace noted at few others last week.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:56 AM | Comments (58)
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This ad did two thingsÂ…

It forced the DoJ to stop stonewalling and release the names of the lawyers who worked for free on behalf of terrorist detainees.*

It also got the media to focus on the real villains here, Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol.

ItÂ’s a given that anytime conservatives charge something damaging about liberals, the media doesnÂ’t actually consider the charge being made but rather focuses on how horrible the conservatives are for daring to make it.

Today brings these two attacks on Cheney and her organization.

The NY Times begins in this predictably sad wayÂ…

In the McCarthy era, demagogues on the right smeared loyal Americans as disloyal and charged that the government was being undermined from within.

And blah, blah, blah. When people yeal “McCarthyism”, I tend to nod off.

Second a group of lawyers, including some who worked in the Bush administration, has released a letter which says in part,

The American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients is at least as old as John AdamsÂ’s representation of the British soldiers charged in the Boston massacre. People come to serve in the Justice Department with a diverse array of prior private clients; that is one of the departmentÂ’s strengths. The War on Terror raised any number of novel legal questions, which collectively created a significant role in judicial, executive and legislative forums alike for honorable advocacy on behalf of detainees. In several key cases, detainee advocates prevailed before the Supreme Court. To suggest that the Justice Department should not employ talented lawyers who have advocated on behalf of detainees maligns the patriotism of people who have taken honorable positions on contested questions and demands a uniformity of background and view in government service from which no administration would benefit.

Such attacks also undermine the Justice system more broadly. In terrorism detentions and trials alike, defense lawyers are playing, and will continue to play, a key role. Whether one believes in trial by military commission or in federal court, detainees will have access to counsel. Guantanamo detainees likewise have access to lawyers for purposes of habeas review, and the reach of that habeas corpus could eventually extend beyond this population. Good defense counsel is thus key to ensuring that military commissions, federal juries, and federal judges have access to the best arguments and most rigorous factual presentations before making crucial decisions that affect both national security and paramount liberty interests. To delegitimize the role detainee counsel play is to demand adjudications and policymaking stripped of a full record. Whatever systems America develops to handle difficult detention questions will rely, at least some of the time, on an aggressive defense bar; those who take up that function do a service to the system.

HereÂ’s the thing, if you only listened to the defenders of the terrorist lawyers youÂ’d get the impression that unless these brave defenders of American values stepped up and volunteered their services, the detainees would have had no legal representation whatsoever. ThatÂ’s simply false. The military provided counsel to each of the detainees (pdf) and enabled them to challenger their status within the military commission system and federal court.

The defenders also say that these top flight law firms donated valuable services only they could provide. Okay but thatÂ’s not the same as saying they would not have been receiving competent and aggressive counsel to begin with. It seems these folks, the lawyers and their defenders, are saying that detainees are not only entitled to basic representation but the best available and nearly unlimited resources as well.

This is a level of service and protection not provided to the overwhelming number of actual Americas on a daily basis. IÂ’m sure there are people caught up in legal problems not of their own making who would love to have the resources of a top flight law firm put at their disposal. Yet they somehow have to make the best of the lawyer they can afford or the ones provided to them by the courts.

There's also a practical matter that should concern everyone. Obama came to office promising to deal with terrorism in general and detainees in particular in a very different way than the Bush administration did. Shouldn't we know if the people designing and implementing these new policies have certain prior positions and affinities? No, you can't always tell a lawyers personal beliefs from teh cases they handle but you can't rule it out entirely either. It seems if nothing else, we should be able to make our evaluations on this.

As for the Boston Massacre analogy, it fails to persuade. Those soldiers were British subjects on British soil. Of course they were owed all the legal and traditional rights of any other Englishman. Al Qaeda terrorists held in Gitmo are none of those things.

I don’t think these lawyers share the ideology of al Qaeda and quite frankly I doubt Cheney and Kritol do either. Calling them the “al Qaeda Seven” was a way to grab attention and was well within the bounds of political discourse. Still the fact remains that these lawyers chose to use their talents and resources in the service of terrorists. They did so not to maintain some minimal standard of representation but to go beyond that basic standard and attempt to expand the traditional rights afforded terrorists and war criminals. Like all choices in life, this one has consequences. When you voluntarily associate with bad actors, some of that is going to rub off on you.

*Allah points out that FNC puzzled out the names and DoJ confirmed them, so my characterization of the ads impact was overstated. There is no doubt that it brought attention to the matter and possibly some public pressure on the department.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:36 AM | Comments (69)
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Its not 15 million unemployed, or trillion dollar deficits stretching as far as the eye can see, or Democrat bloodbath coming this November, or the insane pushing of wildly unpopular legislation, or that every promise comes with an expiration date, or singularly uninspired foreign policy, or pervasive corruption problems in the Democrat party. No, its Fox fracking News baby.

..."Obama's big problem," a senior Democrat told me, "is that four times as many people watch Fox News as watch CNN."...

With little rest, it pours out rage 24 hours a day: its message is of the construction of the socialist state, the hijacking of America by "progressives" who now dominate institutions, the indoctrination of children, the undermining of religion and the expropriation of public money for these nefarious projects. The public loves it, and it is manifestly stirring up political activism against Mr Obama, and also against those in the Republican Party who are not deemed conservatives.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 08:59 AM | Comments (181)
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It's a slow news day, unless you want to talk about Obama saying "The time for talk is through" in Pennsylvania today. So how about the Iron Man trailer that debuted yesterday?

Ace and I argued about the first Iron Man 2 trailer (which I panned). This one is better.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:55 AM | Comments (36)
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:04 AM | Comments (137)
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