He's not the president yet. All he can do is make plans on what he MAY do come 1/20, and given that the current situation could be vastly different by then it would be pointless if not silly to say what he's going to do.

What IS newsy is how the current president got us into this mess and what he plans on doing, if anything to get us out of it in the 2 months left he has in office.

but it seems to me that the mormon's would have threatened their tax exempt status by financially backing, so prominently, a political matter.

I mean, they didn't just preach that they thought gay marriage was wrong, they actively worked to defeat it.

Could 'not torturing people' be considered 'progressive'.

gj Bush

is the reasoning for doing it. Bush should have been impeached long before now for much worse crimes than merely being incompetent.

"Why is it so concerning that the Mormon church, a tax free organization, got involved in this and the fact the Californians Against Hate, another organization organized as a California nonprofit public benefit corporation, exempt from taxation under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code isn't a concern?

Not sure but I'll take a shot at it: The law provides for non-profit advocacy organizations to be tax-free. Why? Don't know but they do. The law also provides for organizations with no other rationalization for existence other than, oh say, a belief in an invisible old man in the sky, to be tax-exempt but, perhaps in recognition of the flimsiness of the rationalization it specifically requires them to NOT take an advocacy role in political affairs.

So despite all the talk about whether gay marriage is right or wrong (its right) and whether civil unions are equal or not (they're not) this issue is about an organization that may be breaking the law. And as someone who feels strongly about tradition, I know you'd want them to be held accountable.

For me I thought Bill Pullman, fixing his steely gaze on the objecting general and saying "I'm also a fighter pilot!" was the weakest shit I ever saw! The aliens were more believable than the human acting in that movie. But I guess what made me guffaw, spewing popcorn at the pure blatant cheesiness of it, made Joe Klein think it was really cool. So obviously his judgment is deeply flawed.

Lets face it, 'Old Media' though it probably understands it intellectually, can't grasp it on a practical level that the 'New Media' is going to bust them when they're wrong. Before the bloggers really took off it was a free-for-all say whatever you want on any given day and you were probably never going to be called on it. I don't know if it'll change but until 'Old Media' retires or dies off, people like Klein are going to constantly be stepping on their own feet because their job it turns out is not actually 'journalism' but just 'holding forth'.

Went to Joe's article on Time and there is no comments section :(

...After Bush's penchant for appointing top posts to people whose top qualification was loyalty to Bush, then loyalty to conservatism, I have to say, as liberal as I am, I'd much prefer Obama's absolute number one criteria for filling these positions is qualification, NOT diversity. Yeah, diversity is nice, this being America and all, but the shape we are in, diversity must take a back seat to expert professionalism.

Lock him in a BBW brothel til its over. We'll all be happy.

On a serious note, I'm not sure I understand how Bill agreeing to release the names of his past donors signals the end of the vetting and not the beginning. Now that he's making the info avail, shouldn't the vetting begin?

Does anyone think that with 60 dem seats the dems would ever manage to get ALL of them to vote the same? The dems would need a 65-70 seat margin to have a filibuster-proof 60 seat margin.

Don't Send Vitter Back To D.C. Whore Around

When I heard the Gov say 'Fuck Obama' in regards to Obama being unwilling to offer anything except for the president-elect's 'appreciation' in return for giving the seat to whomever Obama wanted it to go to, I wondered if it were possible that Obama was the one to finger him.

I bet you in the future when asked about his achievements that he's most proud of in office, he says his 'shoe-dodging'. But, and I'm totally serious, he'll be completely sincere and non-ironic.

To his mind, his dodging was, like, awesome.

Umm, doesn't the entire premise of the article rest on the (until proven otherwise) false idea that Obama is guilty of some scandal?

Yes, while Mr. Spitzner's specific legal transgression itself may have been petty, given the fact of Mr. Spitzner's position as a maker, arbiter and inflicter of the law on others makes the outrage predicated on that point valid. You can't say just because Cheney is guilty of the deaths of untold hundreds of thousands (at best) people shouldn't be upset with Spitzner. Its not either/or. People should be outraged and disgusted that a man who took it upon himself to hold others responsible for not following the law, to break the law AND they should be frankly marching in the streets to demand Cheney be imprisoned.

Obama is president of everyone. He's acting that way. It just seems strange after 8 years of: You can only work for the gov't if you swear fealty to Lord Bush. Yeah, I'd like to see him crush the people I think are idiots, but given the shape of the country the only thing I'm going to judge Obama on (initially) are the consequences of his actions. If letting Rick Warren sleep in the Lincoln bedroom keeps the economy from collapsing (entirely) somehow, I'm for it.