The Houston Chronicle is reporting that a retired astronaut and former Marine is on the short list to replace Michael Griffin as Director of NASA:

A former astronaut who has made four trips into space is reportedly a leading candidate for the top job at NASA. If selected by President-elect Barack Obama, Charles Bolden Jr., 62, a retired Marine Corps general who makes his home in Houston's Bay Area, would be the first black American to head the space agency. The former test pilot left NASA in 1994 after 14 years of service to return to the Marine Corps, where he rose to the rank of major general. He retired in 2003.

Don't know much about Charles Frank "Charlie" Bolden, Jr. (Wiki bio) , and sources close to the Obama-NASA Transition Team declined to comment when I contacted them about this. But based on what I could rummage up, he sounds like a worthy choice.

I wish I could figure out a way to mock this better than it mocks itself:

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) - Joe The Plumber is putting down his wrenches and picking up a reporter's notebook.

The Ohio man who became a household name during the presidential campaign says he is heading to Israel as a war correspondent for the conservative Web site pjtv.com.

Samuel J. Wurzelbacher (WUR'-zuhl-bah-kur) says he'll spend 10 days covering the fighting.

He tells WNWO-TV in Toledo that he wants to let Israel's "'Average Joes' share their story."

So Not-Joe the Not-Plumber has now gone from not-plumbing, to being Joe The Candidate, to Joe the Country Star, to Joe the War Correspondent.

This, of course, after Not-Joe, expert that he is on Middle Eastern affairs, publicly maintained that the election of Obama would lead to the "death of Israel". Oddly enough, Israel appears to live, given that Sammy is heading there to war-correspond and whatnot.

I fully expect that on my next trip to the ER, the resident will be one Samuel J. Wurzelbacher. After all, it's important to involve Average Joes in the health-care industry, so as to prevent the field from being dominated by all these elitist M.D.'s.

One has to wonder why so many exciting new career changes are actually necessary for Not-Joe, given the lucrative not-plumbing business he was prepared to start which would have crippled him under the new SOCIALIST tax plan. I guess a $250,000 not-plumbing business doesn't go as far as it used to.

There's plenty more in DemocraticLuntz' excellent diary.

• Funny:

  The candidates for Republican National Committee chair have been talking about how to effectively campaign in the era of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. But it looks like they're having problems with technology that first became widespread back when Eisenhower was president.

  A C-Span staffer has informed us that the RNC voted to close today's meeting, which is being held as a forum for the leadership candidates, and eject the cameramen and press so it won't be carried on TV or elsewhere.

• The Shepard Fairey portrait of Barack Obama was seen everywhere during the 2008 presidential campaign, and now you can see the original at the National Portrait Gallery.
• Jack Kemp, former congressman, NFL quarterback and Bob Dole's running mate in 1996, has been diagnosed with cancer. Best wishes for a complete recovery.
• Via Americablog, Bob Barr, the author of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), now believes it should be repealed:

  In effect, DOMA's language reflects one-way federalism: It protects only those states that don't want to accept a same-sex marriage granted by another state. Moreover, the heterosexual definition of marriage for purposes of federal laws -- including, immigration, Social Security survivor rights and veteran's benefits -- has become a de facto club used to limit, if not thwart, the ability of a state to choose to recognize same-sex unions.

• The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the deficit  federal budget deficit will be $1.2 trillion for 2009. Ouch.
• Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson says that President-elect Obama is now the "decision maker" when it comes to the spending whatever is left from the $700 billion TARP fund.
• John McCain just can't let go of his campaign slogan:

  Less than two weeks from the inauguration that he hoped would usher in his own presidential administration, Senator John McCain announced the formation of a new political action committee that will work to promote Republican causes.

  Borrowing a slogan from his campaign, Mr. McCain is calling the committee, “Country First,” and it is likely to help lay the foundation for his 2010 re-election bid.

• If you're attending one of the ten inaugural balls on January 20th, expect long lines, packed crowds, and little or no food and drinks. And have fun.
• Want to see something both amazing and terrifying?  Watch the spread of Walmart and remind yourself that this isn't a time lapse analysis of a epidemic... or is it? - Devilstower
• Next up on the list of critical American industries seeking a bailout; the porn industry. Says Larry Flynt in seeking a potential $5 billion bailout from Congress:

  But the industry leaders said the issue is a nation in need. "People are too depressed to be sexually active," Flynt said in the statement. "This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex."

  "With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind. It's time for congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America. The only way they can do this is by supporting the adult industry and doing it quickly."

  Insert joke - brownsox

Perhaps the biggest question surrounding the Employee Free Choice Act has been when we can expect Congress to act on the bill. In recent weeks, there has been a current of reporting, particularly in right-leaning media, suggesting that Free Choice was being moved to the legislative back burner. But there are fresh indications that Congress and the Obama Administration (God, it feels good to type that) recognize that we can't have genuine middle-class stimulus without the wage-buoying effects of collective bargaining -- the very effects that the Employee Free Choice Act is designed to create.

Matt Cooper writes today:

There is no question that Obama favors the bill; he was one of its many co-sponsors in the Senate. But now he has to make a choice. If Obama wants the law, he can get it passed, but he’ll have to fight for it—and spend valuable political capital early in his term—when he has other priorities, like pushing health-care reform, clean-energy efforts, and an economic-stimulus measure. In 2007, the E.F.C.A. was passed by the House but was filibustered in the Senate and did not pass. This time, though Democrats enjoy a larger majority in the Senate, some in the caucus—especially new senators from conservative states, like Mark Begich of Alaska—might not stand up against a Republican filibuster.

Transition officials were divided on how aggressively and quickly Obama should move on the bill, but sources close to the campaign tell me he will push ahead. I’ve often been a critic of unions, but on this issue, I support them and think Obama is right to move forward.

(Emphasis mine.) Matt Cooper is certainly a Beltway Insider, so this is encouraging -- both the news that Obama is pushing for early action on the Act, and that a villager like Cooper supports its passage. More concrete evidence that the Act is going to receive swift consideration comes from yesterday's TAPPED:

A Democratic aide on the hill passes along the first ten bills that Majority Leader Harry Reid will put in the hopper this evening to kick off the new session of Congress, as sent by leadership to various Senate Legislative Directors. Unfortunately for us, the bills are placeholders that only contain vague statements of purpose, not specific legislative language, so we can only get a sense of the basic priorities of the Senate Democrats. Here's the countdown:

   * S.1 -- American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 . . . The stimulus bill; no surprises here.

   * S.2 -- Middle Class Opportunity Act of 2009. Sound familiar? This is a retread of a bill sponsored by Senator Chuck Schumer in the last Congress that has a variety of tax reform goals; the additional descriptions in this bill include hints at union support ("ensuring workers can exercise their rights to freely choose to form a union without employer interference") and perhaps another go at the Ledbetter law ("removing barriers to fair pay for all workers").

(Emphasis added.) That sure sounds like Free Choice -- in fact, it could hardly mean anything else.  And why shouldn't an act that allows people to vindicate their right to bargain collectively be part of the stimulus wave? As Harold Meyerson writes in today's WaPo:

The one great period of broadly shared prosperity in U.S. history remains the three decades following World War II, which, anything but coincidentally, is the one period in which America had high levels of unionization. The business lobby is throwing big money into ads opposing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would make it easier for workers to join unions, but one concern it has neglected to address is how the United States can again become a land of broad-based affluence with private-sector unionization at its current 7 percent level. There is no historic precedent for mass prosperity absent mass collective bargaining. The model cannot be constructed.

Happily, Barack Obama seems to have learned the right lessons from America's economic history. He knows that the stimulus package needs to be big enough to compensate for the collapse of bank lending. He knows that unemployment insurance and food stamps cannot be allowed to run out. He supports the EFCA as a way to boost Americans' incomes.

It can't come soon enough.

Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, 12-30-08:

White vowed not to authorize Burris' appointment by Blagojevich, but tried to take the focus off Burris. The secretary of state's role is to forward the appointment to the Senate.

"Although I have respect for former Attorney General Roland Burris," White said in a statement, "because of the current cloud of controversy surrounding the governor, I cannot accept the document."

Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, this morning:

The Illinois Secretary of State, Jesse White, downplayed his own role in preventing Roland Burris from joining the Senate, and put the responsibility for not seating Roland Burris on the shoulders of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

He also said he hopes Burris is seated.

"They could have seated him without my signature," White -- previously seen as a key opponent of the pick -- told WGN Radio, saying his signature was purely "ceremonial." Burris was not seated because the Illinois State Seal -- which White controls -- was not on his credentials.

White's words put the ball firmly into Reid's court, and leave Burris on offense in the public fight.

"What the senate did to Roland Burris yesterday...they played a little bit of a game with him," he said.

The host asked him if he thought Reid had made him a "fall guy."

"You're absolutely correct," he said. "It's ugly."

"I think the world of Roland Burris," he said. "We're the best of friends."

"Roland Burris is going to be seated," he predicted, saying he hopes Burris becomes the next senator from Illinois.

As you know, it was the absence of White's signature that led the Secretary of the Senate to block Burris' appointment yesterday before it could reach the Senate floor.  This controversy rests on Senate Standing Rule II, which states in the relevant parts:

2. The Secretary shall keep a record of the certificates of election and certificates of appointment of Senators by entering in a wellbound book kept for that purpose the date of the election or appointment, the name of the person elected or appointed, the date of the certificate, the name of the governor and the secretary of state signing and countersigning the same, and the State from which such Senator is elected or appointed.

3. The Secretary of the Senate shall send copies of the following recommended forms to the governor and secretary of state of each State wherein an election is about to take place or an appointment is to be made so that they may use such forms if they see fit. ...

There's two problems with this objection.  One, under Illinois law, it's Burris' White's duty to sign this certificate ("It shall be the duty of the Secretary of State ... to countersign and affix the seal of state to all commissions required by law to be issued by the Governor.")

More fundamentally, as Burris' mandamus petition (PDF) makes clear, the 17th Amendment empowers the Governor of a state to make interim Senate appointments, if the state legislature so empowers the office.  It does not give a Secretary of State a de facto veto power over the Governor's choice.  And for the very same reason that Burris cannot stand in the Governor's way, nor too can Rule II of the Senate Standing Rules -- I simple don't see how the Constitution allows the Senate to add requirements as to who gets to appoint an interim Senator under the 17th Amendment.

Still, that leaves Article I, Section 5, and I stand with those who argue that the Senate's power to judge "Returns" includes the power to investigate and adjudicate whether any fraud, corruption, bribery or illegal scheme was involved in this appointment.  This matter can be referred to the Rules Committee, soon to be under the chair of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), to investigate this matter just as it did for William Vare in 1927-28, for the 1974 NH Senate race, for Mary Landrieu in 1997.  (Landrieu was allowed to serve in the interim nine months while the Senate investigated, and as a 1996 report of the Senate Legal Counsel suggests, usually the person is seated while the investigation is ongoing.)

Yes, I know, no one has yet uncovered any facts suggesting fraud in this appointment, and Burris has provided an affidavit to the Illinois House of Representatives (PDF) suggesting minimal contact with Governor prior to his selection.  Given that the Governor has been recorded as seeking a scheme to gain personal advantage through this very Senate appointment, however, it's worth using the Committee's time and subpoena power to look into this.  As I've suggested before, if Rules and then the Senate as a whole can't wrap this up until after Governor Blagojevich is impeached, convicted and removed from office, so be it.  But the bottom line is that if Roland Burris is to be denied this Senate seat, it has to be the Senate itself so deciding -- not Jesse White, and not the Secretary of the Senate.

Public Policy Polling. 1/3-4. Registered voters. MoE 3.7% (No trend lines)

This comes hard on the heels of PPP's previous release, which showed head-to-head numbers pitting Kennedy against the Attorney General himself (and losing 58% to 27% among all New York voters, and 54% to 34% among Democrats).

Against potential Republican opponent Peter King, Kennedy is within the margin of error, while Cuomo sports a robust lead of nearly 20 points.

Superweapon, indeed.

Kagro X over at Congress Matters looks at what would happen if the Republicans successfully held up the organizing resolutions for the 111th Congress--the rules for the 110th would hold. And the downside would be that Democrats wouldn't get seated on committees, while the upside would be ... well, imagine all the same committees from last year--minus all the Republicans who just lost elections.

(From the diaries. Add any information you can, people, so we can get a grip on the problem. SusanG)

Let me state right off the bat that I'm not a techie, so I don't know how much I can contribute to my own diary in the thread, but there's a major meltdown going on right now at Soapblox, and this seems like the best-suited site for public information gathering.

Sometime this morning Soapblox was hacked. But that's not the disturbing part.  The disturbing part is this new post from pacified:

(+)   SoapBlox is Dead
by: pacified
[subscribe]
January 07, 2009 at 08:15:46 MST
It was a good ride, but it's over.

Thanks for all the fish.

All these hackers messing with our stuff, and we here at SoapBlox have no clue what to do.  We don't have enough knowledge, time, money, or care to fix it.

So I hope the Hackers are happy.

If you want the data from your blog, we will get it.  But we are not going to try and restore anything.

Consider this the "We're Out of Business" post.

Most of the servers have been taken off line because they were being used to hack and exploit other websites.  The hackers install this crap on servers after they get in.  SoapBlox's ISP then takes the servers off line.

We do not know when they will come back online.

We do not know if they will come back online.

A number of sites are out, including (please add ones in the thread and I will update:

Blue Hampshire
Blue Jersey
Blue Mass Group
MN Campaign Report
My Left Wing (site loads w/o diaries)
Never in our Names
Pam's House Blend
Swing State Project
West Michigan Rising

Thoughts?

And ideas on community style blogging platforms in case soapblox is dead for good?  There are thousands and thousands of people who are on soapblox every day, and not just with the 50 state progressive blog list.  This is not a minor concern.

Update: For an explanation about why this issue is so devastating, check out Why SoapBlox Matters by jnbr51. --SusanG

Here's a gem from Norm Coleman's challenge of Al Franken's victory:

On Election Day, election judges in several precincts failed to initial the backs of Ballots under their control as required by Minnesota law and failed to prevent the deposit of Ballots without such endorsement in the Ballot boxes and voting machines.

In other words, Norm Coleman believes that voters who did everything right should have have their ballots voided -- simply because some election judge didn't initial the back of their ballot.

Moreover, the requirement to which Coleman refers does not come from directly from a statute -- it's actually one of Minnesota's administration rules, and those administrative rules require the election judges do more than just initial the back of ballots. For example:

The judges are to do the following:
(1) meet at the polling place at least one-half hour before voting begins;

So by the logic of Norm Coleman's election contest, if any election judge showed up late, then every ballot cast at that polling location should be voided -- whether or not voters did everything right.

The amazing thing is that this "initial the backs of Ballots" argument is arguably among the stronger arguments contained within Coleman's petition.

The joke's on Harry Reid. Again.

AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats plan to accept Roland Burris for President-elect Barack Obama's vacant seat.

Egg shortage declared in the Metropolitan Washington area. The entire current market supply is on Harry Reid's face.

This was just all kinds of stupid from the very beginning. Where was the reserved take-it-slow-ism for which the World's Greatest Deliberative Body is supposedly famous? This really should have been a "we'll see how things develop" situation from the get-go, and now it's just a giant embarrassment.

And yet another situation in which the Senators insisted they knew the rules and the law better than the Cheeto-munching morons of the blogosphere, and yet the blogosphere ends up calling it right.

Duh.

Duh, duh, duh!

UPDATE: Politico says Reid's office is denying this report.

And you know what? I almost hope it's true, despite having just come out and screamed "Duh!" at the Majority Leader of the Senate. Because if they end up seating Burris so soon after denying him even so much as access to the Senate floor, it's gonna look even more ridiculous. And although they would never have tried it, if they had taken up Burris' credentials first yesterday, just to settle the question, they could have actually shoehorned Franken in, too. Now that would have been a power play.

If you caught the opening session of the 111th Congress yesterday, you saw the House work through its ritual biennial reconstitution, including the adoption of a new set of standing rules. Because every Member of the House is reelected every two years, the House is entirely "new" each time, so they have to adopt "new" rules each time the start over.

In practice, that means pretty much re-adopting the rules they had last time, along with whatever changes they want to make looking forward. And there were a few interesting changes this time around.

Here's the package itself, contained in H. Res. 5 (PDF), if you'd like to see what such a resolution actually looks like.

What's in it? Ask Steny. He'll tell you, also in PDF form.

Rules changes this year will further strengthen the integrity of the institution.  Commonsense reforms incorporated into the House Rules Package include:

• Closing the loophole that allowed ‘lame duck’ Members to negotiate employment contracts in secret to ensure full transparency in future negotiations.

• Removing reference to term limits for Committee Chairs from this package to remove political considerations from the official Rules of the House. Term limits were originally incorporated into the House rules by Republicans in 1995, and as a result, elevated fundraising as a prerequisite for election to Chair.

• Making commonsense changes to the motion to recommit that preserve the Minority’s legitimate right to present policy alternatives while denying them the abusive practice of subverting the work of Congress by working to kill key measures that have broad, bipartisan support from the American people by raising unrelated amendments for the sole purpose of scoring political points.  

• Codifying additional budget earmark reforms adopted mid-term in the 110th Congress resulting in even further transparency and accountability in the earmark process.

• Maintaining strong PAYGO rules that will help restore fiscal discipline.

I'm particularly pleased to see the changes being made to the motion to recommit, which has been irksome to me (and, it turns out, to some people who actually count) for some time now.

A quick primer: a motion to recommit a bill to committee with instructions to report back a proposed amendment "forthwith" means the bill stays on the floor and is amended immediately, whereas instructions to report back "promptly" actually sends the bill off the floor and back to committee, where it usually dies.

The MTR with instructions to report back "promptly" is a stupid option to even have on the books. If you want the chance to change legislation, then vote to change it. If you want the chance to kill it, then wait five minutes and vote against the bill.

The need to change this rule may be our own fault for allowing Democrats to break ranks on motions to recommit, but there was never any real utility to the "promptly" instruction except as a way to kill a bill while looking like you're not killing it. How was the public ever to guess that "promptly" really meant "never?" The "promptly" instruction is a bullshit trick, and it deserves to die.

Hoyer provides some interesting numbers on the "promptly" instruction. Republicans offered 50 such motions in the 110th Congress. Democrats offered just 36 during the entire 12-year Republican majority from 1995-2007. (Most, I would bet, were in the 109th Congress, when the Dems, then in the minority, hatched the strategy of frequent use the motion to recommit to set up election issues. Unsurprisingly, it turned out that the tactic can also be used by other people when they're in the minority.)

Another number: Dems actually voted to pass 25 "forthwith" motions in the 110th Congress, which is held out to demonstrate that they were willing to work with Republicans on "fine-tuning" legislation with this procedure. Of course, we learned recently that that's about the total number of motions to recommit that were adopted. That prior article lists the number of motions adopted at 24. I don't know where the 25th came from, but if the whole number of motions adopted was in the neighborhood of 24 or 25, and Hoyer's fact sheet says 25 "forthwith" motions were adopted, then maybe the "promptly" motions weren't a tremendous problem after all. Still, I don't really even like "forthwith" motions, because I don't like the idea of amending legislation in 10 minutes when you often haven't even seen the text until the moment it's offered. But hey, that's just me.

Anyway, here's yet another Hoyer fact sheet, this one (PDF) just on the MTR issue, if you're interested. And why wouldn't you be? Especially when becoming familiar with the motion to recommit opens up a whole new world of geek humor, which you could have enjoyed yesterday if you watched the proceedings and saw Republicans offer a motion to recommit the Rules package with instructions to remove the change in the rules on motions to recommit.

At least they had the courtesy to offer the MTR with instructions to report the changes back "forthwith." Frankly, I'm surprised they didn't take their last opportunity to offer a "promptly" instruction, if just for old times' sake.

But there were other goodies buried in the Rules package, too. Check these out!

Built right into the vehicle of the Rules package, the House authorized the Judiciary Committee to continue its lawsuit seeking to enforce its subpoenas and contempt of Congress citations against Bush White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers.

Technically, Miers and Bolten were in contempt of the 110th Congress. But with its adjournment, the 110th Congress no longer exists, so there's nothing to be in contempt of, nor any plaintiff in the lawsuit. The courts had indicated that this might give them cause to moot the whole case and drop it. But the Rules package specifically authorizes the Judiciary Committee in the new 111th Congress to continue the suit. And we had earlier word that the 111th was considering reissuing those subpoenas.

From Hoyer's fact sheet (PDF):

Continuing Authority Over Executive Branch Lawsuit –

• Congress has the responsibility and constitutional right to oversee the Executive Branch.  The lawsuit was filed in order to preserve and enforce the House’s constitutional responsibility and right to oversee the Executive Branch; it also was filed to preserve the Executive Branch’s responsibility to comply with congressional subpoenas and to restore the institutional integrity of Congress.  This provision authorizes the Committee on the Judiciary and the House General Counsel to continue the lawsuit derived from the House holding White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers in contempt of Congress for failure to comply with congressional subpoenas.  Because the subpoenas expire at the end of the 110th Congress, the resolution is needed so that the Judiciary Committee can continue to appear in court in the 111th Congress.  

• With respect to the continued investigation into the firing of certain United States Attorneys, this provision authorizes the chairman of the Judiciary Committee to issue subpoenas and the taking of depositions by Members or counsel, which will be governed by rules printed in the Congressional Record by the Rules Committee chair or otherwise prescribed by the Judiciary Committee.  In addition, it authorizes the Judiciary Committee and General Counsel to add as a party to the lawsuit any individual subpoenaed by the Committee in the 110th Congress who failed to comply.

• The House has already won the contempt of Congress case at the trial level; a Federal judge ordered Mr. Bolten and Ms. Miers to comply with valid congressional subpoenas – this resolution allows for the continuance of that lawsuit during the appeal.

But that's not all.

Take a good look at this part again:

In addition, it authorizes the Judiciary Committee and General Counsel to add as a party to the lawsuit any individual subpoenaed by the Committee in the 110th Congress who failed to comply.

Who else was subpoenaed by the Judiciary Committee in the 110th Congress and failed to comply?

Karl Rove.

And Michael Mukasey.

Nice going, Chairman Conyers and Speaker Pelosi.

In the face of what was likely some stiff resistance and a desire to "turn the page" with a new administration, etc., Conyers and Pelosi appear determined to get an answer from the courts once and for all on whether the Congress is to have a serious subpoena power with respect to the executive branch or not. Good for them. And good for us. And good for Rules Committee Chair Louise Slaughter (D-NY-28) for agreeing to include these measures.

Now that Jeb Bush has withdrawn himself from consideration in Florida's 2010 Senate race, Politico reports that the GOP has a real problem on their hands.

By declining a chance to run for the Senate seat of retiring Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has deprived Republicans of a leading recruit and created a wide-open battle that could result in crowded, messy primaries in both parties.

As former Florida State Republican Party Chairman Alex Cardenas told the St. Petersburg Times before Bush said he wasn't running:

As a Republican who loves his party so much, I know we need him.

Well, they're not getting him, and it's truly an amazing commentary on the GOP that not having a Bush running for federal office is a huge setback.

In the House, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader:

House meets at... 10:00 a.m.: Legislative Business
Fifteen "One Minutes" Per Side

Last Vote Predicted... 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.

Suspensions (3 bills)

1)     H.R. 35 - Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2009 (Rep. Towns – Oversight and Government Reform)

2)     H.R. 36 - Presidential Library Donation Act of 2009 (Rep. Towns – Oversight and Government Reform)

3)    S.J.Res. 3 - Ensuring that the compensation and other emoluments attached to the office of Secretary of the Interior are those which were in effect on January 1, 2005. (Oversight and Government Reform)

In the Senate, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader:

Convenes: 11:30am
Morning Business with senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

The Senate will recess from 12:30pm until 2:15pm to allow for the weekly Democratic caucus luncheon.

Light floor schedule today. Electoral vote count tomorrow. The first two bills listed for the House are those I told you abouton Monday, in This Week in Congress. They're unfinished business from last Congress.

The third bill is the Ken Salazar version of the Saxbe Hillary Clinton fix that Adam B. told you about a few weeks ago.

Yesterday in Congress, I milled around with all the folks in town for the swearing in, and gawked like a tourist at the Members I saw: Sens. Mark Udall (D-CO), Ken Salazar (D-CO), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Joe Lieberman (WTF-CT), John McCain (R-AZ), Sen.-designate Michael Bennett (D-CO), and Reps. John Salazar (D-CO-03), Diana DeGette (D-CO-01), Patrick Murphy (D-PA-08), Alan Grayson (D-FL-08), Jared Polis (D-CO-02) and former Reps. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL-05), and Pat Schroeder (D-CO).

That's not news, but I thought I'd throw it in there just for fun, to spice up a slow-ish morning after the big opening day. So yes, we have visual confirmation that those people we see on C-SPAN are real.

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

Quit Whining, It's Just Your Money

Newsweek's Larry Kaplow visited the newly-opened U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Sounds like a weekend at Club Med:

I'm a mere layman when it comes to architecture, but the place struck me as dismal and defeatist. Maybe I'm missing something, like a new trend in rectangles, sharp corners and cheap metal sheeting. There are plenty other fortresslike embassies, some of which have caused debate in the past. But they at least tried to add an architectural flourish or two. This embassy, visible from large swaths of the capital, evokes rigidity and fear. Many compare it to a prison.

At least there's no raw sewage coming out the of the light fixtures, and the automatic fire-extinguishing system no longer starts fires.

The new embassy is a collection of more than 20 boxy buildings in burnt orange and beige, plopped down on about 100 acres of walled land by the Tigris River. One of the largest office buildings has gray, bladelike horizontal metal sunscreens on the top half supported on naked girders. It's like the venting on some industrial furnace or maybe the world's largest, meanest cheese grater. Or a giant, multiedged razor. I kept my distance.

And here's the hilarious punchline: 740 million dollars.

Is hurtling through space on a rock populated by idiots a gas or what??!

Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Wednesday, and the weather sucks in the northeast. Here's a winter mix of the pundits.  

Maureen Dowd:

And believe me, she talks a whole lot better than the former junior senator from New York, Al D’Amato, who once wailed that he was "up to my earballs" in some mess, and another time complained to me that those "little Jappies" bring over boats full of cars and then take the boats back empty.

Ich bin ein, you know, New Yorker.

Tom Friedman:

That is, Gaza is a mini-version of three great struggles that have been playing out since 1948: 1) Who is going to be the regional superpower — Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Iran? 2) Should there be a Jewish state in the Middle East and, if so, on what Palestinian terms? And 3) Who is going to dominate Arab society — Islamists who are intolerant of other faiths and want to choke off modernity or modernists who want to embrace the future, with an Arab-Muslim face? Let’s look at each.

Walter Dellinger: On seating Burris.

A similar situation arose in 1967, when the House of Representatives refused to seat Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the outspoken congressman from Harlem accused of personal misconduct involving public funds. I was clerking for Justice Hugo Black two years later when he joined in the Supreme Court decision that the House lacked the power to deal with Powell’s conduct by refusing to seat him.

WaPo: A smorgasbord of Minnesota and Franken v Coleman (now with lutefisk.)

David Ignatius: Leon Panetta? Hey, Langley, the joke's on you. And this Villager approves.

Michael Gerson:

During the campaign, I sometimes criticized Obama for lacking specificity and ambition. But as the specifics emerge, the ambitions of his campaign pledges are ever more clear.

I've been wrong about a tremendous number of things, come to think of it. Luckily, I'm a pundit now, so no one keeps track.  Anyway, if Obama pulls this stuff off, Republicans are screwed.

Jay Cost & Sean Trende:

Today's essay is the first in a series analyzing the results of the 2008 presidential election. Our goal here is not to describe every minute detail, but rather to highlight significant trends that emerged on Election Day.

One significant trend is that the President doesn't have a South Central accent.

Ever wonder about the definition of "region" in the polls?

While it can be said that excerpts sometimes fail to capture the full favor of many political writers, choosing to spotlight only a few paragraphs of the work of digby often feels like a crime. This is so in the current instance because digby has two interrelated major points to make, and I'm only focusing on one. So, as usual, I highly recommend you click on through to read the whole piece, from which I have extracted this:

Rendition, secret prisons, torture, outrageous tribunals. Yeah, these recruiting posters for terrorists sure make me feel safer. The incoming Obama administration has nothing to replace them with? Puhleez. How about we replace them with the kind of policies and approaches to the rule of law that people like Scheuer are supposed to be defending instead of denigrating?

• • •

The Overnight News Digest is posted and includes the story Wealth of U.S. millionaires down 30 percent: survey

Tonight's Rescue Rangers are YatPundit, a synthetic cubist, HansScholl, Elise, mem from somerville, jlms qkw, and taylormattd as editor.

Please enjoy reading these outstanding, ranger-selected diaries:

• In a report that may surprise you, Schoenke tells us that In 2008, NRA Shot Blanks. American Hunters and Shooters Hit the Target. (mem from somerville)
• In an excellent first-diary, CentristandProud discusses Common sense or the lack thereof regarding drugs(war on) and the mentally ill. (YatPundit)
• Frank Cocozzelli spells out how the Religious Right Turns a Blind Eye to a Real Life Issue with a personal perspective on crucial research. (mem from somerville)
• it really is that important shares the why and how of coping techniques in Uncertainty, Fear, Anger....and Healing. (jlms qkw)
• Avenging Angel reminds us that the merry-go-round is still spinning with Yoo, Bolton, Saltsman and the GOP Irony Machine. (mem from somerville)
• Mrs W explains Why I won't teach without my union. (HansScholl)
• ItsJessMe reminds us that personal actions can have downstream consequences in You never know when you make a difference. (mem from somerville)

jotter has High Impact Diaries: January 5, 2009.

brillig has Top Comments- 01/06/09 Tug Edition.

Please feel free to promote your favorite diaries in this open thread.