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This is rich. C-Street Family member Tom Coburn who along with his fellow Family members have been doing their best to inject religion into the health care debate, uses a quote by Thomas Jefferson about separation of church and state, and takes it out of context.

h/t jenyum at Daily KOS who has more -- Dear Senator Coburn: Liberals Can Quote Jefferson, Too:

During today's Senate health care bill debate, Senator Tom Coburn held up a big graphic displaying a quote from Thomas Jefferson:

To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical

This quote resided in the background while Coburn went on and an about earmarks, and abortion, and waste and fraud in the federal government. If Senator Coburn had actually read the original source of the quote, however, I don't think he'd be so quick to use it.

Jefferson's actual words originated in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom:

to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical

The Statute goes on to say...

our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry, that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages, to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right, that it tends only to corrupt the principles of that very Religion it is meant to encourage.

Obviously among other things too long to list, Tom Coburn's irony alert button is broken. He'd better hope he doesn't wind up in trouble for his part in his buddy John Ensign's affair that the press has been giving him a pass on. As jenyum noted:

Jefferson's words when not taken out of context are hardly a rallying cry for a party that opposes health care reform on religious grounds.

Couldn't have said it any better myself.

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Howard Fineman pointed out the obvious on Hardball the other day. From BarbinMD at Daily KOS--It's All Your Fault. As she notes, "was there ever any doubt?"

Phoenix Woman as FDL has more--Senator Hissyfit Lets the Mask Slip:

The man who owes his Senate seat to movement Republicans wanting revenge on Lowell Weicker for doing the right thing with regard to Richard Nixon has shown the public the real person behind his mask of unctuous piety and bipartisanship — namely a man so petty he’s willing to go back on his stated support of a position (in this case, Medicare expansion) just because someone he doesn’t like who favors it.

[...]

As HuffPo’s Rachel Weiner notes, this goes a long way toward validating the belief in progressive blogger circles that Lieberman, as the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein put it, “seems primarily motivated by torturing liberals.”

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As usual, it's all about Joe and his ego. Sadly anything we "leftie" bloggers do is just going to make him act worse. Here's one idea via Bob Cesca (my apologies for lifting the entire post, but it was a short one):

BooMan has a great idea for dealing with Joe Lieberman.

Maybe we should find out how Lieberman likes to get to work and just go park our cars in the middle of those streets each morning. You know, just because we can.

I have a serious question here: From now on, do we have to support the exact opposite of what we want in order to fake out Joe Lieberman? I mean, I know he sounds like Elmer Fudd, but now we have to outsmart him as if we're in a Bugs Bunny cartoon?

US: Public option!
LIEBERMAN: No public option!
US: No public option!
LIEBERMAN: Public option!
US: Thank you! ZOOM!

Hardball transcript via below the fold.

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From Keith's post over at Daily KOS--Special Comment: Not Health, Not Care, Not Reform:

There could not be a finer line between the words compromise and compromised and tonight, with the greatest possible reluctance, I believe I have to go on the air and state my opinion that the Senate bill in its current form has clearly crossed that line and, as currently constituted, cannot be passed.

Seems he's as unhappy about the recent developments with this health care bill as many of us are.

Finally, as promised, a Special Comment on the latest version of H-R 35-90, the Senate Health Care Reform bill.

To again quote Churchill after Munich, as I did six nights ago on this program:

"I will begin by saying the most unpopular and most unwelcome thing: that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat, without a war."

Last night on this program Howard Dean said that with the appeasement of Mr. Lieberman of Connecticut by the abandonment of the Medicare Buy-in, he could no longer support H-R 35-90.

Dr. Dean's argument is informed, cogent, heart breaking, and unanswerable.

Seeking the least common denominator, Senator Reid has found it, especially the "least" part.

This is not health, this is not care, this is certainly not reform.

I bless the Sherrod Browns and Ron Wydens and Jay Rockefellers and Sheldon Whitehouses and Anthony Weiners and all the others who have fought for real reform and I bleed for the pain inflicted upon them and their hopes. They have done their jobs and served their nation.

But through circumstances beyond their control, they are now seeking to reanimate a corpse killed by the Republicans, and by a political game played in the Senate and in the White House by men and women who have now proved themselves poorly equipped for the fight.

The "men" of the current moment, have lost to the "mice" of history. They must now not make the defeat worse by passing a hollow shell of a bill just for the sake of a big-stage signing ceremony. This bill, slowly bled to death by the political equivalent of the leeches that were once thought state-of-the-art-medicine, is now little more than a series of microscopically minor tweaks of a system which is the real-life, here-and-now version, of the malarkey of the Town Hallers. The American Insurance Cartel is the Death Panel, and this Senate bill does nothing to destroy it. Nor even to satiate it.

It merely decrees that our underprivileged, our sick, our elderly, our middle class, can be fed into it, as human sacrifices to the great maw of corporate voraciousness, at a profit per victim of 10 cents on the dollar instead of the current 20.

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CNN's Jeanne Moos takes a look at some of the treatment Joe Lieberman has been receiving on line. I think she picked out some of the nicer stuff that's out there.

Via Steve Benen, some pretty interesting news that probably will not shock you. So we're not the only ones feeling less than enthusiastic about Democratic performance, huh:

The latest Research 2000 poll for Daily Kos included the usual question on the generic congressional ballot, with Dems still enjoying a modest edge over Republicans, 37% to 32%, with 31% unsure. Democratic numbers were strongest in the Northeast (53% Dems, 7% GOP), and Republican numbers were strongest in the South (51% GOP, 21% Dems).

But this poll added a new question to the mix to measure voter enthusiasm: "In the 2010 Congressional elections will you definitely vote, probably vote, not likely vote, or definitely will not vote?" The overall results aren't nearly as interesting as the partisan breakdown.

Among self-identified Republican voters, 81% are either "definitely" voting next year or "probably" voting, while 14% are "not likely" to vote or will "definitely" not vote.

Among self-identified Independent voters, 65% are either "definitely" voting next year or "probably" voting, while 23% are "not likely" to vote or will "definitely" not vote.

And among self-identified Democratic voters, 56% are either "definitely" voting next year or "probably" voting, while 40% are "not likely" to vote or will "definitely" not vote.

Markos, who called the results "shocking," explained:

Two in five Democratic voters either consider themselves unlikely to vote at this point in time, or have already made the firm decision to remove themselves from the 2010 electorate pool. Indeed, Democrats were three times more likely to say that they will "definitely not vote" in 2010 than are Republicans.

This enormous enthusiasm gap ... seems to make passing legitimate health care reform an absolute political necessity for Democrats. This polling data certainly should be something for Congressional leadership to consider, as they move along the legislative path.

The notion of an enthusiasm gap this year is not exactly new, but we haven't seen numbers quite this stark until now.

It's the death of an American icon, a working-class woman who stood up for her rights and unionized her workplace. And wouldn't you know it? She fought the mills, but she couldn't make her insurance company do the decent thing until it was too late:

The woman whose life inspired the 1979 film Norma Rae has died of cancer after struggling with her health insurance company, which had delayed her treatment.

Crystal Lee Sutton was 68. She had struggled for several years with meningioma, a form of brain cancer.

She became a hero to the labor movement in the 1970s, when she took on her employer, a North Carolina textile plant, and unionized the factory floor. Her story became famous nationwide in 1975 after New York Times reporter Hank Leiferman wrote Crystal Lee: A Woman of Inheritance.

In 1979, her story was turned into the movie Norma Rae, a thinly-veiled fictional adaptation of Sutton’s struggle to unionize the J.P. Stevens plant in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. Sally Field won an Oscar for her portrayal of the character inspired by Sutton.

As Daily Kos blogger hissyspit points out, last year Sutton gave an interview to the press where she described a struggle with her health insurer over treatment. The Times-News in Burlington, North Carolina, wrote in 2008:

[Sutton] went two months without possible life-saving medications because her insurance wouldn’t cover it, another example of abusing the working poor, she said.

“How in the world can it take so long to find out (whether they would cover the medicine or not) when it could be a matter of life or death,” she said. “It is almost like, in a way, committing murder.”

She eventually received the medication, but the cancer is taking a toll on her strong will and solid frame.

In 2008, the North Carolina branch of the AFL-CIO urged supporters to donate money to Sutton’s medical fund. On its Web site, the union had stated that “after initially being denied coverage by her insurance company for life saving treatment, Sutton is now on drug and chemo therapies and has undergone two surgeries.”

In its obituary the Greensboro News-Record describes her now-legendary struggle to unionize the J.P. Stevens plant:

In 1973, a 33-year-old Sutton was working at the J.P. Stevens plant in Roanoke Rapids, where she was making $2.65 an hour folding towels. The poor working conditions she and her fellow employees endured compelled her to join forces with Eli Zivkovich, a mill worker turned union organizer, and attempt to unionize the plant employees.

Sutton eventually lost her job, but the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) won the right to represent the workers at the plant and Sutton briefly became an organizer for the union.

In 1977, she was awarded back wages and her job was reinstated by court order, although she chose to return to work for just two days.

Our food system is broken.

Our nation is collectively getting heavier and heavier and suffering the effects of it in our health (and the taxes that puts on our broken health care system).

In poorer neighborhoods, the issue is even more stark. Access to healthy options are almost non-existent and with uninsured and underinsured populations, the impact is nothing less than killing those least able to defend themselves.

Jill Richardson started writing about the obesity epidemic on Daily Kos back in 2006 to great response. She's expanded her research to look at how agriculture has changed over the last 50 years and how the answer to our broken food system is simply to alter our methods towards sustainability. That research has resulted in the book we're going to discuss today: Recipe For America.

Jill looks at organics, government subsidies, foreign methodology to agriculture, the impact of pesticides and food delivery systems to break down in a easy-to-understand breakdown of the tangled and interdependent food system. She even gives some simple ways that we can change the system that will benefit all of us immeasurably.

So please join me in welcoming Jill Richardson to C&L to discuss Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It.

Nice work from Jed at Daily KOS TV. Fox News didn't bother to let their viewers know that Senator Kennedy voted against cloture and the final bill as well.

h/t The Political Carnival

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h/t Scarce

Oh this is just lovely. From hekebolos at Daily KOS.

So, the story isn't news--go read the diary for the full account--but I'll recap it:

an incident broke out at a town hall at Simpson University in Redding [Northern California] on Tuesday when Herger signaled encouragement to a 67-year-old town hall attendee, Bert Stead, who called himself a "proud right-wing terrorist."

"Amen, God bless you," Herger reportedly replied to the comment. "There is a great American."

Dusty Trice: Bringin' the wacko daily...Michele Bachman predicting Nazis. "Current administration more in line with the Weimar Republic." And this store-bought stooge can't even lie right!

Stinque: Pennsylvania GOP leadership turns to robbing funeral home burial accounts

No More Mister Nice Blog: No, wait...I know this one. The answer to " who does Joe Klein think is the Crazy Left?" Glenn Greenwald for fifty points

Prometheus 6: They're running out of black conservatives

Where’s the Outrage?: Interview with McJoan of the Daily Kos

HOLY CRAP: Warriors for Christ...God Calling...Texas bible scholars...Ayatollah Kit Bond...The kindness of God...Repent...Diseases caused by sin...Liberal Jesus...Are you there, God?...Idaho says no...Lutherans to allow gay pastors...Holy-War Fever...

So the logical question is, exactly who does Max Baucus serve? Surely not the residents of Montana:

Fifty-five percent of Democrats in Montana disapprove of how Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has handled healthcare reform, according to a new Research 2000 poll given to The Hill by a liberal activist.

Liberal advocacy groups and labor unions have been running television ads and running grassroots operations in Montana this summer targeting Baucus and criticizing his tepid support for a government-run health insurance program.

It appears the campaign has begun to impact Baucus’s public standing.

A majority of Montana Democrats disapprove of Baucus’s actions on healthcare reform while only 34 percent of Democrats approve, according to the poll, which was conducted from Aug. 17 to Aug. 19. The poll was commissioned by Daily Kos, an influential liberal website, according to the source.

Overall 42 percent of Democratic, Republican and independent voters approve of Baucus on healthcare reform while 44 percent disapprove. Nearly half of Montana Republicans polled, 49 percent, approve of Baucus’s role in healthcare talks.

More than a third of Democrats polled said they would be less likely to vote for Baucus if he opposed a public health insurance option while 52 percent said their vote would not be affected. About one in 10 said they would be more likely to support Baucus if he opposed a public option.

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Well, you can't say Andrew Breitbart doesn't have an active imagination.

The Hollywood right-winger went on Glenn Beck's Fox News show yesterday -- guest-hosted by Judge Napolitano -- and proposed the following conspiracy theory: The White House is collecting e-mail addresses so it can send out "netroots gangs" to physically attack and intimidate its critics.

Breitbart: Well, what people need to understand here is that they're being community organized. And the White House absolutely understands how the Internet works, and understands that there are countless blogs, Media Matters, the Daily Kos, which are collecting information and putting out the disinformation.

What the White House wants to do is create a hierarchy of who its enemies are. Every week, or periodically, they meet with the netroots. And the netroots acts as an action gang that can go out there and attack the enemies of the president and attack the enemies -- the, the, the people who would attack his plan.

So it is vital for this White House to find out who its enemies are, and then to sic its gang of netroots people on the American people.

Breitbart goes on to contend that the non-prosecution of two Black Panthers for polling-place violations was connected to this conspiracy:

Breitbart: That sends a direct message to the netroots people out there: Don't worry, this administration has our back. Those people that would community organize on behalf of the president and his initiatives will be protected.

Yeah, I should have guessed that black-radicals/liberal geek connection from the Black Panthers booth at Netroots Nation last week.

Wotta maroon.

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Markos commissioned a national poll to ascertain just how many people out there are suckering for the right's "Birther" conspiracy theories.

For the country as a whole, it looks good:

Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America or not?

Yes 77
No 11
Not sure 12

But when we look at Republicans alone, it looks pretty grim:

Yes No Not sure
Dem 93 4 3
Rep 42 28 30
Ind 83 8 9

In other words, nearly a third of them believe the Birthers outright, and another third of them think "they may have a point there, Vern."

And where are the bulk of these gullible saps from?

Yes No Not sure
Northeast 93 4 3
South 47 23 30
Midwest 90 6 4
West 87 7 6

These numbers reveal that there's a strong regional component to the abject willingness of some Americans to buy any kind of cockamamie BS available if it bashes liberals.

Kagro at daily kos is sick of the umpire talk in the Sotomayor hearings. In fact, it was always a ridiculous argument, first forwarded by the disingenuous now Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. During his 2005 confirmation hearings, I wrote about how disingenuous Roberts was to use the analogy:

It is an interesting analogy Judge Roberts draws. And it seems to me to be an excellent argument for why Judge Roberts must answer the questions put to him by the Senate. As any baseball fan knows, umpires are not uniform in the delineation of the strike zone. Some are "hitters" umpires. Some are "pitchers" umpires. Some call the high strike. Some call the outside pitch.

And when it comes to the Supreme Court of the United States, it is important that we know what Judge Roberts' "strike zone" is. His record, the part that was not concealed by the Bush Administration, gives many of us pause regarding Judge Roberts' "strike zone." His stated antipathy for the right to privacy, for voting rights measures, for discrimination remedies, etc., demands followup. What does your "rulebook" say about these things Judge Roberts?

Senators Feinstein, Whitehouse, Schumer and Durbin all pointed out today that Chief justice Roberts was less than honest about what his judicial strike zone would be. In that sense, the umpire analogy still has its uses.

There was an article in The Hill the other day about Rep. Jane Harman's plight:
Tangled in wiretap, opposed by left, Harman could face tough primary

Anti-war forces and liberal bloggers have despised Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) for years, and now they smell blood in the water.

Harman has taken plenty of heat from her left flank over the years for supporting the Iraq war and President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program. And now that she’s in some political trouble for allegedly offering favors on a federal wiretap, her detractors might just have the ammo they need.

Already, 2006 primary opponent Marcy Winograd has opened an exploratory committee and others are also making their interest known. Plus, bloggers are talking about recruiting one of the their own to challenge Harman.

Experts say the congresswoman looks OK right now, but the situation remains fluid.

That is all pretty much correct, but then Aaron Blake had a bit of other news in the story.

Howie Klein, the Southern California-based author of the DownWithTyranny blog, said the new revelations could help change that.

“When Marcy ran the first time, it was a really tough road for her, because people didn’t understand,” Klein said. “Even on a really great website like Daily Kos, there were a lot of people that didn’t understand.”

Klein said a group of bloggers met earlier this year to discuss challenging Harman in a primary, weeks before the recent revelations. He said many in the blogging community would like a fellow blogger, John Amato, to challenge Harman and that Amato is considering it.

I wanted to confirm to my readers that I am considering running for Jane Harman's seat. I've had meetings with bloggers and activists way before this story broke and they have urged me on. I've also been contacted by established campaign managers who have won elections which included huge upsets in the past that have expressed a serious interest in managing my campaign. This is a very important step in the process. At this point I am considering it, but haven't made a decision yet. I'm going to take my time before I decide, but I thought I owed it to you to confirm this report.
Now back to our regularly scheduled content.