Pointing out the hypocrisy of Republican positions on procedural fairness is getting tiresome, I know. But I can't let this one pass.

From Jay Newton-Small at Time:

Who won? It's the exact same question people asked in 2008, after each of the presidential debates. I didn't like it then and I don't like it now. What's "winning"--scoring more debate points, making fewer gaffes, or simply appealing to more voters? And aren't all those judgments pretty subjective anyway?

But if Thursday's event didn't produce a winner, it was clarifying.

Who won? It's the exact same question people asked in 2008, after each of the presidential debates. I didn't like it then and I don't like it now. What's "winning"--scoring more debate points, making fewer gaffes, or simply appealing to more voters? And aren't all those judgments pretty subjective anyway?

But if Thursday's event didn't produce a winner, it was clarifying.

(Click here to read more.)

The White House has released some more details about Thursday's Blair House meeting: Who will be there and the shape of the table where they'll all be sitting:

The President will be seated in the middle of one side of the hollow square, with the Vice President, Secretary Sebelius, and congressional Leadership seated alongside him. Members will be seated by caucus around the square.

In the wee hours of Monday morning, the Democrats won the first of four votes necessary to pass health care reform legislation.

The vote was procedural, over whether to end debate on Harry Reid's "manager's amendment." With all forty Republicans joining a filibuster, it took the votes of all sixty senators in the Democratic caucus to proceed.

The moment was not exceptionally dramatic, given that the last Democratic holdout, Nebraska's Ben Nelson, had declared his support on Saturday.

Last month, the Senate voted to confirm Judge David Hamilton to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Getting a judge confirmed is always a good thing for a president. But it's hard to view what happened to Hamilton as a victory for Obama. In fact, if anything, the episode suggests that the president's approach to nominating federal appellate judges is seriously misguided.

As part of the Republican efforts to drag out the debate on health care reform bill, Senator Tom Coburn has been threatening to demand that Majority Leader Harry Reid schedule a full reading of his legislation before debate begins. Reid, in turn, is looking at alternatives, such as holding the Senate in session next week.

I'm sure most Democrats are hoping Coburn decides the effort is futile and abandons his quest, thus freeing everybody to go home Thanksgiving week. But whatever Coburn decides, I wonder if Democrats shouldn't embrace this opportunity--and make the most out of it. Why not read the bill, regardless of what Coburn demands, but delegate the task over to everyday Americans who have suffered because of the inadequacies of our health care system?

Senate rules would apparently forbid the Democrats from doing this in the chamber. (If Coburn follows through with his threat, some poor clerk would still have to do it there.) But there's no reason Democrats couldn't stage a public reading on the Capitol steps or some other nearby venue.

Multiple sources on and around Capitol Hill say Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is ready to go. At 5 p.m. today, he'll present the his full health care reform bill, complete with a Congrssional Budget Office score, to a meeting of the Democratic caucus. A press conference may follow.

The Democratic message machine is already hard at work. As Emily Pierce, Brian Beutler, and Ezra Klein have reported, leadership is putting out the word that Reid is "very pleased" with the bill and its CBO assessment.

Suffice to say this makes me "a little worried."

Most of Washington seems to think a low CBO score is automatically a good CBO score. But a low CBO score means a bill that doesn't involve a lot of federal outlays. And without a lot of federal outlays, you can't insure as many people or provide them with as much protection.

I'm a bit late in getting to this, but I have to disagree with Suzy Khimm's take on GOP Senator Tom Coburn's co-authoring a piece for The Advocate with Christopher Barron, Chairman of GOProud.

In their latest attempt to turn the tide against the public plan, some Republicans have begun trying to appeal to gay Americans to join their anti-government crusade. As The Hill notes today, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn has co-authored an op-ed blasting “government-run health care” for The Advocate, the leading LGBT magazine. Together with his co-author, GOProud’s Christopher Barron, Coburn rails against the Ryan White CARE Act for forcing AIDS patients onto waiting lists to receive life-saving drugs from a government program. “These bureaucratic inefficiencies and mismanagement have literally cost lives,” Coburn and Barron write. What’s the lesson learned for the gay community? To push for health care reform that avoids “creating an inefficient and expensive government program,” the pair concludes, championing Coburn’s private-insurer-friendly Patients’ Choice Act as an alternative to the Democratic plan.

Coburn doesn’t explain, of course, how the private market or his own reforms will succeed in making expensive AIDS drugs more affordable than the current Ryan White programs, other than repeating the line that insurers shouldn’t be able to discriminate against those with pre-existing conditions. But what makes the argument even more difficult to take seriously is the fact that Coburn--one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate--has a long history of vicious attacks on gay rights, the gay community, and “the gay agenda.”

I've stood up for Hank Paulson a few times these last several weeks, but this Times piece from yesterday strikes me as a real problem.