The NYT has a short piece today that gives us yet another reminder of why it's so much fun to tell lawyer jokes. (Don't get me wrong: As a journalist, I appreciate this line of humor--much the way residents of Arkansas appreciate the existence of Mississippi when it comes time to whip out the jokes about poor, dumb, toothless, inbred crackers.)

Following the Senate’s big news yesterday on the public option, some House progressives have been feeling bullish about the chances for the strong version of the public plan, as I reported yesterday. But they aren’t quite there yet. After a House Democratic caucus meeting this morning, Representative Raul Grijalva said that the House had between 206 and 210 votes to support the strong version of the public option, which would reimburse providers based on Medicare plus 5 percent.

Naturally, the attention of health care reform observers (and who isn't one these days?) is focused on the action in the Senate Finance Committee right now.  But an equally important drama is playing out in the House Democratic Caucus.

As Ryan Grim explains at HuffPo today, the Caucus is due to meet tomorrow to assess the views of Members before the House formally acts on the "tri-committee" proposal that's been cleared for the floor.  And the big issue is the relative strength of those within the Congressional Progressive Caucus who have vowed to oppose any bill at any stage of the process that doesn't include a "robust public option," and those in the Blue Dog Coalition who don't much like the public option.  Both groups are whipping their members, reports Grim:

The fate of the public option in the House will be largely determined by the parallel whip efforts -- and how aggressive each bloc is in pushing for its priorities. In other words, it comes down to which pack wants it more, the Blue Dogs or the progressives.

For months now, various right-wing bloggers and Glenn Beck have been trying to whip up outrage over Van Jones, Obama's green-jobs guru. Their accusations to date—that he's a secret communist, say—have been absurd and easily ignored. But all of the sudden Jones may be turning into a real political headache for the White House. Yesterday, he had to apologize for an old YouTube clip in which he called Republicans "assholes" for thwarting environmental legislation.

Lorna's Silence Sony Pictures Classics

My Fuhrer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler First Run Features

One of the more thrilling chapters in film history is the account of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. The joint career of these Belgian brothers has been, since they became known, breathtaking. After some twenty years of documentary work for Francophone television, in the early 1990s they began to make features. The first two were not widely seen. Then came La Promesse (1996), which was so much better than good, so complete and startling a work, that the occasion seemed less like the arrival of a fine new film than the discovery of a long-lost masterpiece.

Alhtough the recent spate of bombings in Iraq seem designed to whip up sectarianism, the positive spin is that, so far, we haven't seen major retaliation. WSJ:

Ha'aretz:

A U.S. delegation of Republican congressmen visiting Israel on Thursday said that the Obama administration's policy on Israel is misguided, puts too much emphasis on the issue of settlements and ignores the bigger threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.

This idea that Sonia Sotomayor's line that a "wise Latina woman" has an advantage in judging over a white man is racist can be taken in two ways.

One is that the people saying this are just playing politics. The other is that they are as curiously deaf to what the term racism means as they assail liberals of being, standing right alongside their bugbears such as Jeremiah Wright in slowing America's progress towards "post-racialism."

'Yes, sometimes I go into the room with my advisers and I start shouting. And then they say, 'And then what?'" The question hangs in the perfectly cooled air in Sa'ad Hariri's marble-floored sitting room, where Beirut appears as a sunlit abstraction visible at a distance through thick windows. Hariri's father, the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, martyr of the Cedar Revolution, arches his black eyebrows from a giant poster near the sofa, looking out at his son with a sidelong, mischievous glance. "It hasn't been a joyful trip," Sa'ad Hariri is saying.

In 2007, John Bolton wrote that Republicans had achieved "the end of arms control." He was referring to a string of conservative successes, sta

I.

Sergeant Schmidt. The Artillery Shell. The Bullet.

Even in the hyper-competitive world of political media strategists--a line of work that tends to reward the studied deployment of affectation and outsized personality--Steve Schmidt, the tough-talking, shaven-headed, 37-year old former high school tight end from North Plainfield, New Jersey, who recently emerged from a scrum among John McCain's inner circle to become the head of day-to-day operations, arrived on the national stage trailing more colorful nicknames than most.