Dr. David McKalip

Back in July we brought you the story of Dr. David McKalip, the Tea Party movement anti-anti-reform activist who was caught circulating a racist email with a photo of loincloth wearing President Obama in the guise of a witch-doctor.

After we publicized the email, McKalip apologized, later said he was withdrawing from the public debate over health care and felt compelled to resign as the head of the local medical association.

So we were surprised when TPM Reader JG let us know that last night McKalip resurfaced as an expert on health care reform for none other than Glenn Beck at Beck's town hall style meeting to discuss the horrors of reform.

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I'm going to go way out on a limb here: Professional wrestling and necrophilia have never come up together in a political campaign before today.

Now the YouTube videos of those old WWE sketches that Connecticut Democrats were flagging to reporters as a hit on Linda McMahon have been yanked after WWE complained of copyright infringement.

The NRA asks the question on all our minds: Should Hillary Clinton team up with third-world dictators to take away our guns?

A former Bush II official who's also Muslim decries the GOP-led witch hunt for Hill interns/Muslim "infiltrators," in an interview with TPMmuckraker: "Really what they're trying to do here is to scare otherwise thoughtful members and chiefs of staff from hiring Muslims."

Justin Elliott interviews Chris Gaubatz, the insurance salesman turned fake Muslim intern:

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Change your name. Grow a beard and learn the ways of Islam. Present yourself at the Council on American Islamic Relations. Acquire an internship. Wear a wire. Take whatever isn't bolted down.

Read the rest of Justin's report ...

Terry McAuliffe tells TPMDC that as much he hates to admit it, he doesn't see a public option making it into the final version of a health care reform bill.

Progressive groups prep ad campaign in Nevada to pressure Harry Reid on public option.

For the past few years, as the Jack Abramoff corruption investigation and its various spinoffs threatened to consume the entire decade, it had become pretty obvious that the feds' main remaining target was a relatively unknown Abramoff protege by the name of Kevin Ring.

The feds had brought case after case against those who Ring had come in contact with during the GOP lobbying heyday of the early 2000s -- and one by one they had pleaded guilty, avoiding trial and hoping to lighten their sentences. But long after Jack Abramoff had been carted off to jail and others had paid their debt to society and tried to resume their lives, Ring still held out, declining plea offers and eventually taking the case to trial.

But the biggest fish in the Abramoff saga to actually go to trial slipped away yesterday when the judge declared a mistrial on seven of the eight charges implicating Ring. Zack Roth takes a look at what went wrong with the Ring prosecution.

Connecticut Democrats, anticipating a tough re-election fight for Sen. Chris Dodd, are in oppo research heaven digging through World Wrestling Entertainment clips for material to use against GOP candidate Linda McMahon, a former WWE CEO and wife of WWE principal Vince McMahon.

Chris Christie, on the campaign trail: "I'm gonna let you in on a little secret ... I'm overweight."

In a possible echo of the death of the census worker in Kentucky who had "Fed" scrawled across his chest with a felt tip marker, a California man was indicted today for an email threat to kill President Obama "then write 'fed shit' on his chest with a felt tip."

Jon Stewart joins in the fun at the expense of the RNC's new GOP.com website. Watch.

The key findings in a new report from Greenberg and Carville on the GOP's conservative base: They are more intensely anti-Obama than liberal Democrats were anti-Bush, and their antipathy is not driven by racial prejudice.

Campaign contributors abandon Sen. John Ensign (R-NV).

The RNC chairman livens up his self-declaration as the cow on the tracks stopping the train of health care reform -- with sound effects.

Rep. Joe "You Lie!" Wilson (R-SC) wound up out-raising his Democratic challenger Rob Miller in the third quarter despite the big nationwide fundraising push against Wilson over his outburst.

Two new polls on the New Jersey governor's race: Corzine ahead in one, Christie in the other -- both within the margin of error.

Why has Obama managed to get just three of his 23 judicial nominations through the Democratic-controlled Senate? That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Is Harry Reid the Public Option's best friend? All the criticism notwithstanding, two prominent progressives tell TPMDC's Brian Beutler that over the last couple week's Reid's "been in practically hourly conversations with a whole set of progressive players re how best to make sure we position ourselves to get a strong public option coming out of conference committee."

Little boy suspected of floating away in a balloon, perhaps tragically falling from the balloon, in fact found at home hiding in a box.

Safe and sound.

(Perhaps outside the box bit of guerilla marketing for new Where the Wild Things Are movie?)

Meet David Gaubatz, the guy behind the 'Muslim intern spy' witch-hunt up on Capitol Hill.

In addition to cluing us into the Muslim intern spy conspiracy up on the Hill, Gaubatz also claims to have personally discovered Saddam's missing WMDs over in Iraq.

Louisiana Judge denies marriage license to interracial couple.

"I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves," said Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell of Tangipahoa Parish.

VIDEO: 4th Grader to Obama: "Why does everyone hate you?"

White House "impressed" with Kendrick Meek.

You may have noticed (as we've reported) that a number of major energy utilities have abandoned the US Chamber of Commerce because of its hardline opposition to any legislation to combat climate change. Why? Zack Roth reports.

It seems like a battle between moderate Republicans and the far right could hand NY-23 to the Dems this November.

Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) is upping the ante today in her push to root out what she claims are Muslim intern 'spies' on Capitol Hill.

Also, in the "intern spy" vs. "intern spy" department, here's actual intern spy Chris Gaubatz, who went undercover as Muslim convert intern "Dave Marshall" at CAIR, in a photo last year with genuine Muslim Congressman Andre Carson (D-IN).

Can't get enough TPM? We've started compiling video clips of TV appearances by our reporters and editors, as well as network news segments following up on TPM's reporting. You can watch all the latest clips here.

Slideshow: Hillary does Europe.

Speaker Pelosi made clear at her weekly press conference that the House is not going to negotiate against itself when it comes to a public option.

I hadn't heard anything about this. But there are massive protests scheduled today in Puerto Rico to protest Gov. Luis Fortuno's plans to layoff another 17,000 state employees. Fortuno in turn is threatening to bring the protesters up on charges of terrorism.

Michael Oren

There's a curious, fairly outrageous, brouhaha going on in the American Jewish community and particularly in the American Jewish community's relationship with the current Israeli government. You may or may not have heard of J Street, a new pro-peace Zionist lobby recently established as a counterweight to AIPAC, which over the years has become more and more exclusively tied to the Israeli right.

Michael Oren is the recently installed Israeli Ambassador to the United States, who among other things wrote a very good history of the Six Day War. (Tom Segev's 1967 is also a very good and very different book.) Prime Minister's Netanyahu's decision to appoint Oren was provocative in itself since Oren had already been quite critical of President Obama during last year's presidential campaign. And he quickly set about pushing the envelope of what is normally considered acceptable in a resident ambassador by inserting himself into American domestic politics.

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Joe Sestak gaining some serious ground on Arlen Specter in the latest poll on the Pennsylvania Democratic primary.

Jon Stewart on Olympia Snowe: "The blazer said staunch Republican, but the skirt hinted she might be bipartisan curious." Watch.

The Social Security Administration will announce today that there will be no cost-of-living adjustment on benefits for the first time since COLAs were adopted in 1975, due to negative inflation. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Reid, Baucus & Dodd release short statement on first day of health care bill mash-up discussions.

People should stop pretending Obama's the Messiah and get back to bedrock Americanism like praising Ronaldus Magnus.

In addition to the weird and now deleted reference to Ronald Reagan as "Ronaldus Magnus", you may have noticed that the site is filled with a lot of what might generously be called non-standard history -- like the idea that the Republican party is made up mainly of people from the 19th century, about half of whom are black. Well we did a little digging and it turns out Steele turned over a lot of the job to a fringe-ish amateur historian named Michael Zak. Meet him here.

I was initially outraged when I saw that four Republican members of Congress today had asked the House sergeant-at-arms to investigate whether Muslim interns on key national security committee are really infiltrators sent to spy on behalf of Islamic terrorists. But the more we looked into it, the more comically ridiculous the whole thing appears to be.

The members (including Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ), who should really know better) base their allegations on a book published by the always reliable WorldNetDaily, titled Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America. The book was based in part on having a co-author's son pretend to be a Muslim (growing the requisite beard for effect) and infiltrate a mainstream Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American Islamic Relations. So the dastardly plot to plant Muslim interns as spies on the Hill was uncovered by an intern acting as a spy.

Justin Elliott lays out the details.

Last night was "Fiesta Latina" music night on the South Lawn, the third installment in Michelle Obama's White House music series. We have the pics:

Alas, it seems the folks at GOP.com have now scrubbed their reference to Ronald Reagan as "Ronaldus Magnus". (See the Late Update: in our post.)

We took a look at those excessive travel charges Chris Christie billed the US government while he was US Attorney. And it's not quite as clear cut as first advertised. Here's our report. Some of the examples fit pretty clearly into the living large category. $449 per night room in Boston because no other rooms were available in town at a cheaper rate, allegedly. Christie experienced the same room shortage on a trip to DC. Other stays, though, were much less clear cut.

The conventional wisdom on the Pennsylvania senate race was always that if Arlen Specter could just find a party to nominate him, he'd probably cruise to reelection. But a new poll out from Susquehanna puts that assumption in real question. He's running about dead-even with the uber-right-wing Pat Toomey and just under a third of voters think he deserves reelection.

Former Rep. and current senate candidate Rob Simmons says he's now tea-bagging the US Constitution.

With GOP.com's relaunch off to such a good start it's hard to know what to expect. But a short while ago TPM Reader DR flagged our attention to the fact that on the site's bio page of Ronald Reagan, at one point they refer to Reagan as "Ronaldus Magnus", i.e., Latin for Ronald The Great.

Now, I think that pretty accurately captures Reagan's status in the contemporary GOP. But we figure this is far too whacky even for the folks running the website. So we're assuming that someone must have hacked into the site. But who knows? So we're checking right now with the folks at the RNC to find out just what's up.

After all, nothing says republican like a monarchical title in a foreign language.

Late Update: We've still yet to hear back from the RNC. But it's starting to look like this wasn't a hack. It's just the RNC's way of referring to Reagan. We'll let you know when we get definitive word.

Later Update: A number of readers point out that Ronaldus Magnus is one of Limbaugh's pet names for the 40th president.

At a press conference on the Hill a short time ago, Harry Reid reacted to Sen. Charles Schumer's declaration that passage of public option is all up to Reid: "He would rather say anything so it wasn't up to him."

Debate by pedantic metaphor: cows, trains, and health care reform. Watch.

Video: Robert Reich: There's still a chance for real health care reform.

As you know, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), a rising star in the Democratic party from an uber-safe seat in Florida, has announced he's resigning from Congress to run a smallish DC think-tank. Normally, such an abrupt move would invite a lot of questions about whether there weren't some hidden issue forcing Wexler's hand. But there's an interesting theory circulating in foreign policy and mideast policy circles that Wexler is taking this position to become a powerful pro-peace voice, in support of President Obama, on the Israel-Palestine issue. The think tank is the Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation. Spencer Ackerman discusses it here. I think this counts as an extremely speculative theory. But there aren't much better explanations. Here's our round-up of what people are saying.

In response to press reports saying that the health care reform train is leaving the station with President Obama at the wheel (or whatever you use to run a train), Michael Steele just told Fox to look out because he is "cow on the tracks." In other words, in addition to his other shortcomings, Steele is apparently unschooled on the history of train/cow confrontations, though I'm not sure it's a metaphor Democrats will necessarily want to dispute. Later, in a new strike in his on-going war with his own dignity, Steele pleaded for a "Rodney King moment" on health care.

I'm torn between whether flagging the same old tired race-baiting from Pat Buchanan is itself tiresome or whether ignoring it, and him, normalizes the toxic sludge that he traffics in.

The RNC has already changed the much-ridiculed title of Michael Steele's blog on the new GOP.com website from "What Up?" to "Change The Game."

Jack Bonner will testify before Congress tomorrow about the forged letters sent to members of Congress by his firm, Bonner and Associates, TPMmuckraker has learned.

More evidence emerging of Texas Gov. Rick Perry actively blocking an investigation into whether an innocent man was executed on his watch.

Birther attorney Orly Taitz responds to the $20,000 fine levied on her by a federal court for bad-mouthing the judge by ... bad-mouthing the judge: "It's a delusional and corrupt judge."

The NYT explores Joe Biden's own evolving thinking on the conundrum of Afghanistan and his growing influence on administration policy on the issue. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Last night Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) ratcheted up the pressure on Majority Leader Harry Reid to include a public option provision when he melds the Baucus bill with the Kennedy bill:

If he puts it in the final bill, in the combined bill, then you would need 60 votes to remove it. And there clearly are not 60 votes against the public option. And so we're urging him to do that, and he's seriously considering it.

More here on the push to shift the onus to reform opponents to strip public option from the bill.

Gov. Jon Corzine (D-NJ) and US Attorney Chris Christie

The highly respected Quinnipiac poll has a new result out on the NJ governor's race. And in line with other recent polls it has one-time frontrunner Chris Christie up by a single point. As the upshot of other recent polls suggests, this is basically a tie race with only three weeks left to go.

I was traveling most of the day. I hear the new RNC website got off to a great start?

Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) is leaving Congress to take over a DC think tank, the Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation.

The NJ governor's race won't go down as the cleanest in history. But as the guy who made ethics his calling card, Chris Christie should have remembered he had a history of excessively charging the government for his business trips as US Attorney.

One of the leading GOP prospects to run against Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), the outspoken congressman who claimed the Republican health care plan was for Americans to "die quickly," has decided not to get in the race -- even though the national GOP has already been trying to raise money against Grayson in an attempt to duplicate Democratic fund-raising success against Rep. Joe "You lie!" Wilson (R-SC).

TPMDC has obtained the anti-reform talking points the insurance industry group AHIP is distributing to agents at one major insurer. Read them here.

American Police Force responded by fax yesterday to the Montana Attorney General's questions. The response? Basically, go jump in a lake.

Michael Steele on the new GOP.com: "It's not even really a website."

Presidential basketball diaries ...

Obama will make a Rose Garden statement on health care reform, presumably on the passage of the Baucus bill through Senate Finance, at 5 p.m. ET.

The RNC's big relaunch of its website has not gone so well today. In the last hour or so, the site has been crashing periodically. The Obama campaign's former online guru, Joe Rospars, tells TPMDC: "You know your web program is in trouble when your site can't even handle the traffic bump from people making fun of your web program."

Senate Finance Committee passes the Baucus bill.

Let the health care reform negotiations begin!

The senators on the Finance Committee are wrapping up their statements on the Baucus bill. From what senators have been saying in their statements, it looks like the bill will be voted out of committee with a 14-9 votes. No big surprises there. The big unknown was which way Snowe would go, and she's going to vote yes. Stay tuned.

Congress to hold hearings on those forged letters to Congress from Bonner and Associates.

The President reacts to Olympia Snowe's decision to support the Baucus bill. Watch.

Sen. Snowe just announced that she will vote the Baucus bill out of committee. Watch.

During the Senate Finance Committee hearing just now (which we're liveblogging here), Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) seemed to go farther than he has in the past in opposing a robust public option provision. His line previously had been that public option just doesn't have the votes in the Senate, but now he's saying he's opposed to it on principle.

Late Update: TPM Reader SA has a different read, and one that our reporter Brian Beutler, on the scene in the hearing room, says is closer to the truth of the matter than what I suggested above:

I've been watching the Finance Committee hearing today, and reached a very different conclusion than David Kurtz about what Kent Conrad said regarding the public option.

He was speaking only about the idea of tying the public option to Medicare costs. Indeed, my reaction was that he was a sending a signal to his fellow Democrats about how they can get support from rural Democrats like him. I thought he left the door more open than he ever has to supporting some form of public option - but not one that would tie its rates to Medicare payments.

More than once, Democrats have found support for a public option among Blue Dog Democrats by compromising on the Medicare pricing, replacing it with the idea that the public option would negotiate for lower costs. It sounded to me like Conrad was saying what it would take to get his support on a public option, not that he was "opposed to it in principle." He's only opposed to tying it to Medicare pricing.

Did AHIP's "bombshell" blow up in AHIP's face? We take a look at the fallout from the AHIP/PricewaterhouseCoopers study 36 hours in.

The RNC relaunched its website this morning. But initially if you clicked on the new site's "Future GOP leaders" page, you got "404 Error: This page could not be found." It appears to be fixed now.

TPMmuckraker's Justin Elliott had the enviable task of breaking the news to birther attorney Orly Taitz that she's been fined by a federal judge to the tune of $20,000. Read his account of their interview.

We've got another poll out showing the NJ gov race is essentially a tie, with Chris Christie holding on to perhaps a razor thin lead. The latest Public Policy Polling poll is out and has Christie up by a single point.

PPP is a Dem poll but respected and this is in line with other recent polls.

A federal district court judge in Georgia has sanctioned birther movement attorney (and dentist, but that's another story) $20,000 for being in contempt of court, i.e., filing frivolous birther motions and bad-mouthing the court.

A day after their study of the Baucus Bill was released, PricewaterhouseCoopers admits that their study didn't show much cost savings from the bill because its analysis didn't include the cost savings part of the bill.

Top-notch product.

Brian Beutler is liveblogging from the Hill in the hearing room where the Senate Finance Committee will vote on the Baucus bill shortly. You can follow his dispatches here.

Jon Stewart applauds CNN for its rigorous fact-checking of itself Saturday Night Live. Watch.

Republicans are threatening Olympia Snowe's shot at becoming ranking member on the Commerce Committee if she votes for health care reform. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry might be the most secretive governor in modern Texas political history, the Dallas Morning News reports today. He won't even release his schedule publicly. Why? According to Perry's press secretary, "Security is different in a post-9/11 world. Security is paramount."

(The reason Perry's lack of transparency has come up again now is he's refusing to release the documents that he reviewed immediately prior to the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, the convicted arson murderer whose conviction is coming under increasing scrutiny, as Josh noted yesterday.)

The Senate Finance Committee convenes at 10 a.m. ET to vote on the Baucus health care reform bill. We'll be following all the developments on the Hill this morning at TPMDC.

As for Olympia Snowe's vote today, the White House has no idea which way she's leaning -- and isn't especially focused on her.

In a short post last night, George Stephanopoulos wrote that by going to war against the Baucus Bill, the health insurance lobby had actually increased the chances of some form of public option appearing in the final bill. I'm not sure if I agree with the exact mechanics George sees playing out. But I think he's got the overall impact right.

Contrary to my expectations, the timing and content of the report were so transparent that they had little effect (at least little that I've seen so far) on the conventional wisdom about the bill's effects but did tend to focus and even unite the supporters of reform.

Israeli President Peres says the peace process and the Iran issue are linked.

NYT picks up the Hardin/APF jail story.

Eric Kleefeld reports on tonight's McDonnell/Deeds debate in Richmond.

Eric Kleefeld reviews the second issue of the already legendary Michele Bachmann comic. But he finds that Issue 2 does not live up to the promise of Issue 1, mainly because the authors rely largely on paraphrases of Bachmann's wingloonian rants rather than the direct quotes which made up most of the copy in Issue 1.

Still good art, though. As you can see. And a must-buy for Bachmann completists.

Fox News responding to White House criticism: "It's astounding the White House cannot distinguish between news and opinion programming."

You know we've been following the bizarre, sad and sometimes hilarious story of Hardin, MT and its crumbling deal with American Police Force to run its unused jail and it seems also become the town's police force. But just how did tiny Hardin get saddled with this prisonerless prison and so desperate to pay for it that they were prey for a con-man like Michael Hilton and his potemkin private security firm?

That's the story TPMMuckraker's Justin Elliott looks at today.

It's a town and prison version of the subprime mortgage collapse. And it's not just Hardin, Montana. A consortium of private companies around the country has been searching the country for impoverished and desperate small towns and who set up complex economic development authorities to build prisons few of which will ever bring in the funds and jobs the prison building song-n-dance men promised.

Here's our report.

Sen. Nelson (D-FL) says he prefers a 'trigger' public option over an 'opt-out' public option because it's stronger.

Magic Johnson endorses Specter.

Admittedly, competition is fierce these days in the right-wing freak-show/hyperbole derby. But it caught even our attention when we saw a prominent figure from the online right comparing Linda Douglass, the Obama administration's fairly mild-mannered spokesperson on health care policy to Joseph Goebbels.

A senior administration official tells TPMDC that AHIP is "up to its old tricks." In a meeting last week, Karen Ignagni, AHIP's president and CEO, told White House officials her group was was working on a report but was "a ways away from having anything they were going to put out," the administration source tells TPMDC. The White House was not tipped off to the report before it dropped late last night.

Scenes from yesterday's gay rights march in Washington, DC ...

Criticizing Barack Obama in her boffo screed against the Nobel award, it's sort of telling that Liz Cheney criticized President Obama's method of "ruling" the United States.

The theory of the unitary executive isn't just a talking point; it's almost in the genes.

Health insurance lobby spokesman tells Fox News there are some things his group and the Senate Finance Committee can agree on: namely, mandates that will force millions of people to buy their insurance.

Common Cause probably isn't feeling it for the New Jersey's governor's race. When asked whether he thinks Chris Christie is fat, Gov. Corzine responded: "Am I bald?"

Gov. Rick Perry (R)

I want to flag your attention to something. There's a percolating story down in Texas about Gov. Perry (R) and the possible execution of an innocent man. There appears to be real question whether Cameron Todd Willingham was wrongly executed for an alleged murder by arson in 1991. Perry had no direct connection to the case. But he did sign the death warrant in 2004. And now he seems to be trying to scuttle an investigation that might have shown he'd signed off on the execution of an innocent man. Here's our report on the latest developments.

A House GOP aide tells TPMDC that Republicans wanting to use the AHIP report against health care reform had first better "double-check to see how much money they've received from the industry."

President McCain sure is making a lot of appearances on the Sunday shows.

Is it really time for a climate change bill when it's getting so cold outside?

Hillary: Obama earned the Nobel for "restor[ing] a kind of image and appreciation of our country." That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Let me get this right. The big news tomorrow is that 'America's Health Insurance Plans' (AHIP, aka the health insurance lobby) has commissioned a study by PriceWaterHouseCoopers that comes to the conclusion that the Senate Finance Committee bill is a bad, bad thing and would lead to health care costs going up even faster than they are under the current system. This is news?

Late Update: And WaPo thinks it's big news.

Even Later Update: Jon Cohn surveys the bamboozlement.

Liz Cheney denounces President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize for "ruling in a way that makes sense to the majority of the people of the world," and for rejecting "American dominance." That and other political news in today's TPMDC Sunday Roundup.