Monday Open Thread [1.6.14]

Welcome back to the first full week of work in 2014! Don’t know about you, but two weeks off convinced me that I’d love to have a few more weeks off.

Hillary News! She’s reported as having met with a political strategy group in DC recently. I don’t know anything about this group, but I do think that she is more likely to be running for President.

Harry Reid was on Face the Nation yesterday and he is not ruling out eliminating filibusters:

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, let me just ask you this: I mean listening to you this morning if the Republicans continue to throw up the kind of opposition you’ve been receiving, you say you’ve been receiving, do you have plans to extend this ban on filibusters? Right now you’ve– you’ve worked out this rule which they vehemently oppose that– so they– it’s very difficult for him to filibuster nominations. Would you be willing to just go to a Senate where just majority rules and that’s it?

SENATOR HARRY REID: Well, Bob, I think it’s something that we have to understand.

BOB SCHIEFFER: So you’re thinking about that?

SENATOR HARRY REID: But that– that’s– that’s– that’s this. We cannot have a country that’s paralyzed because of a group of people, the group of people who are like Tea Party-driven Republicans in Congress, not Republicans. I’m not here to bad mouth the Republicans around the country. I get a lot of support from Republicans in Nevada, and always have had. But they are mainstream Republicans. They’re not driven by this craziness that we have in American today. So the answer is this: We– we– we should pass raising the minimum wage. We should extend unemployment benefits. We should get rid of these tax loopholes and create jobs so the middle class can– can start growing, not shrinking.

BOB SCHIEFFER: But would you do away with filibusters entirely?

SENATOR HARRY REID: Well, I’m– we’re– we’re not there yet. I think that we– we–

BOB SCHIEFFER: I mean are you even thinking about that?

SENATOR HARRY REID: No, I’m not thinking about it today. But I– I think–

BOB SCHIEFFER: You’re saying you’re holding that out. Is– that is a possibility?

SENATOR HARRY REID: I– I– I think everyone should understand that the country cannot continue on the road that it’s on. It cannot have– you cannot have when you have vacancies in the judiciary as we’ve had, DC Circuit, some say it’s more important than the Supreme Court. But it’s, at least, the second most important. They said we’re not going to fill these spots because we don’t want to. You can’t. That’s not the way we legislate.

Make it so, Harry!

Will Bunch writes a piece using the (mostly awful) Obamacare coverage to ask What exactly is the public cost of bad information? He takes a look at a piece published with intentionally bad information and the fact-checking done by someone outside of the newsroom:

But too often, especially in the weeks after the website failed and people who’d been canceled in the transition by the private insurers yet couldn’t get new policies on the web, editors in newsrooms went to reporters and did not ask them to spend some time finding our what’s really going on with health care. No, journalists were ordered simply to find “Obamacare horror stories”…ASAP.

Perhaps most of DL’s readers already know this stuff, but I bookmarked this article providing Four Surefire Tips for Following the Money in Your State