Welcome to Tuesday. I think we must have survived the Breitbartocalypse. I don’t feel any different. It’s definitely feeling like spring around here. My crocuses have bloomed and my daffodils will bloom any day now. I find it kind of amazing how spring this year was almost like a light switch. We were in winter and then suddenly it’s spring. Let’s get this open thread started.
Health care reform is moving forward. The bill has passed the through the first committee.
A key House committee voted Monday to advance President Obama’s plan to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, clearing the way for the House to vote on the measure later this week.
The House Budget Committee voted 21 to 16 to send the health care legislation to the House Rules Committee. That panel is expected to meet Thursday to draft new language for the reconciliation bill, compiling a package of fixes to the $875 billion measure that passed the Senate on Christmas Eve.
Both President Obama and Speaker Pelosi have expressed confidence that the bill will pass. Expect more and higher volume of Republican whining the closer we get to the historic vote.
Nutty rightwing Virginia AG Ken Cucinelli is in the news again. This time its for a newly disclosed audio tape of Cucinelli expressing his support for the birther movement:
Now, according to audio uncovered by blogger Not Larry Sabato, Cuccinelli is floating his support for yet another fringe conservative idea: the “birther” movement. In an audio clip allegedly recorded during the transition period after his election last year, Cuccinelli is asked how he could legally challenge President Obama’s citizenship. Cuccinelli lays out the legal framework, then adds that such a suit could occur because the “speculation” that Obama is from Kenya “doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility”:
Q: What can we do about Obama and the birth certificate thing? Because that’s–
CUCCINELLI: It will get tested in my view when someone, when he signs a law, and someone is convicted of violating it and one of their defenses will be it is not a law because someone qualified to be President didn’t sign it.
Q: Is that something you can do as Attorney General? Can you do that or something?
CUCCINELLI: Well only if there is a conflict where we are suing the federal government for a law they’ve passed. So it’s possible. […] Well, that’s a good question. Not one I’ve thought a lot about because it hasn’t been part of my campaign. Someone is going to have to come forward with nailed down testimony that he was born in place B, wherever that is. You know, the speculation is Kenya. And that doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility.
I can tell, this guy is going to be in the news a lot in the next four years. Hopefully he can’t do too much damage to the state of Virginia in the meantime.