http://www.intrade.com/ 

In Connecticut, Dems May Need to Draft New Candidate

Take this as a poll with a sample size of one. If I were a voter in Connecticut, I'd find it very difficult to pull the lever for Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, whom it was revealed today (by the New York Times' Raymond Hernandez) appears to have misled the public, as recently as 2008, about having served in Vietnam.

In the meantime, WNPR's "Where we Live" is on the air now. The audio will be posted later today.

Mark Pazniokas of The CT Mirror reports:

The campaign of Republican Linda McMahon acknowledged finding and providing the video. We got our hands on it," said Ed Patru, McMahon's director of communications. Patru declined to say from where the tape was obtained or when the campaign gave it to The Times.

Can Blumenthal weather the storm?

One defense, however, is likely to be his long record of accurately referring to his military record. This is not, even as described by the Times, the case of a lifelong fabulist suddenly unmasked. Rather, he is accused of inaccurately describing his record at least twice and leaving a misimpression several other times.

The only reference to his military record on his campaign web site is the second-to-last sentence of his bio: "He served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves, honorably discharged as sergeant." 

As Pazniokas noted on WNPR this morning, we'll see how well Blumenthal's appearance with veterans groups goes later today. 

The New York Times reports this evening that Connecticut's Dick Blumenthal did not serve in Vietnam, despite claims to the contrary in his speeches.

Since Justice Stevens will retire at the end of the term, regardless of whether or not a successor will be confirmed by then, the Republicans have a strong incentive to keep the liberal block limited to three at least through 2014.

Spotted on one of the Rasmussen Reports Facebook thread s today:

So, why is THIS in the health care bill! People WAKE UP!
What the heck is this? Why do we need an armed force in the Health Care Bill?

Section 5210 of HR 3590 the Obamacare Health care Reform Law: Establishing a Ready Reserve Corps. In the health care debate during the last few months, the issue of creating a small armed force under the control of the President seems to have escaped notice...

Two, contrasting views in the latest Forward. Excerpts:

When Washington demanded a total settlement freeze, Netanyahu again found the sweet spot. He recognized that Israelis would not support defying Washington over construction in isolated settlements slated for evacuation under any agreement. But they are tired of unreciprocated concessions, and see no reason to freeze areas Israel plans to keep under any agreement.

So Netanyahu proclaimed a freeze for 10 months only, with any extension conditioned on reciprocal Palestinian gestures. He exempted Jerusalem -- a decision whose necessity Israelis fully understood following Obama's condemnation, days earlier, of construction in the "settlement" of Gilo, as if this huge Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem, which will certainly remain Israeli under any agreement, were indistinguishable from an isolated West Bank outpost.
.....
Indeed, Netanyahu's success in mobilizing the Israeli public has repeatedly forced Washington to retreat on vital issues. For instance, Washington ultimately accepted that construction in Jerusalem won't be frozen and pressured the Palestinians to resume negotiations anyway.

versus

Israel's international isolation is growing by the day. Washington's frustrations are overflowing into blunt criticism. Netanyahu's Bar-Ilan University speech of last June, which seemed at the time like a promising attempt to rally the Israeli public behind consensus diplomacy for a two-state solution, now sounds increasingly like double-talk. The Iranian threat has not been mitigated, and American generals are beginning to link their losses in Afghanistan to stalled Middle East peace efforts. The Israeli public is, according to the latest polls, beginning to take its distance from Netanyahu
......
That Netanyahu's first real clash with the Obama administration only came after nearly a year in office can be attributed to several factors: On the one hand, Netanyahu knows the American political scene and how to manipulate it. On the other, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is ignorant of how Washington works, and is constrained by his own impossible ideological demands and tied down by his own extremists. Meanwhile, President Obama seemingly made every possible mistake and wasted his first year in office with his blanket insistence on a settlement freeze.

From the Rasmussen Reports Facebook page:

Seething mad! Lady Liberty has been brutally beat up, chained and shackled and forced to do unspeakable acts all on the account of socialism. What's next, after they have abused her and tortured her, They'll put their bloody meathooks on her and strangle her till she is no more! Then they'll embrace that monsterous (sic) symbol of the EU, until it swallows them whole and they'll take us down with them. But right before we have gone down the Rats we call politicians will have abandoned ship and make use of all those bank accounts they possess outside of the U.S.

A report that I just received from my inside source buried deep inside the apparatus of the Republican National Committee:

RNC Chairman Michael Steele, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and House Republican Leader John Boehner will proclaim March 23, 2010 as "Nakba ('Catastrophe') Day," to be observed annually by all Republicans and fellow travelers. On each anniversary at precisely 11:57 AM EDT, the exact moment when American freedom was signed away by the Democrat president, a minute of silence will be observed to memorialize the loss of American liberty and the start of leftist tyranny.

(Watch Fox News or FoxNews.com for the official announcement this afternoon at 4:00 PM EDT, but remember, you read about this event here first. "Fair & Balanced")

Mark Steyn of the National Review Online pouts:

If Barack Obama does nothing else in his term in office, this will make him one of the most consequential presidents in history. It's a huge transformative event in Americans' view of themselves and of the role of government.

Last week, Bill Kristol, the Capt. Peter "Wrong Way" Peachfuzz of the talking-head set, had predicted that the HCR bill will be defeated.

Today on Fox News Sunday, the ever-confident Billy predicted that HCR will be repealed by 2013.

 IOW, what will be defeated today will be repealed within 3 years!

So writes Harold Pollack, professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and Special Correspondent for The Treatment today in The New Republic online. Excerpt:

The House of Representatives faces a stark choice. It can enact the Senate bill, and realize the century-old dream of health care reform. By doing so, it can achieve a historic milestone while freeing itself to address other national problems such as joblessness and mortgage foreclosure that affect millions of Americans. Differences between the House and Senate bill can be negotiated through the reconciliation process.

Here are the signatories to the letter to Speaker Pelosi and Chairmen Rangel, Waxman and Miller:

Henry J. Aaron, The Brookings Institution
Gerard Anderson, Johns Hopkins University
Ronald Anderson, UCLA
Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Ronald Bayer, Columbia University
Anna Burger, Secretary-Treasurer, SEIU
David Cutler, Harvard University
Linda C. Degutis, Yale University
Eric Feldman, University of Pennsylvania
Thomas Fisher, University of Chicago
Brian R. Flay, Oregon State University
David Grande, University of Pennsylvania
Thomas Greaney, St. Louis University
Colleen Grogan, University of Chicago
Jon Gruber, MIT
Mark A. Hall, Wake Forest University
Jacob S. Hacker, Yale University
Jill Horwitz, University of Michigan
James S. House, University of Michigan
Peter Jacobson, University of Michigan
Timothy Jost, Washington and Lee University (organizer)
Theodore Joyce, CUNY
George A. Kaplan, University of Michigan
Jerome Karabel, University of California at Berkeley
Mark A.R.. Kleiman, UCLA
Paula M. Lantz, University of Michigan
Simon Lazarus, NSCLC
Arleen A. Leibowitz, UCLA
Theodore Marmor, Yale University
Lynda Martin-McCormick, NSCLC
Michael L. Millenson, Northwestern University.
James A. Morone, Brown University
Jonathan Oberlander, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Karen Pollitz, Georgetown University
Harold Pollack, University of Chicago (organizer)
Daniel Polsky, University of Pennsylvania
Sara Rosenbaum, George Washington University
Meredith Rosenthal, Harvard University
Lainie Friedman Ross, University of Chicago
William Sage, University of Texas
Theda Skocpol, Harvard University
Paul Starr, Princeton University
William Terry, Brigham and Women's Hospital
James A. Tulsky, Duke University
Alexander C. Wagenaar, University of Florida
Joseph White, Case Western Reserve University
Celia Wcislo, 1199-United Healthcare Workers East, SEIU

(Institutional affiliations listed for identification only).

Josh Marshall just blogged:

From a longtime political operative ...

I can expand on this thought if you want, but something roiling underneath in Democratic politics right now. In nearly two decades in politics, I don't think I've ever seen people who have spend their professionals lives electing Democrats to office as angry at the people they elect as they are right now.

Ha! Ha! Ha!  Now, you all know what it's been like for me to have voted for Joe Lieberman.
I just hope that no one else is as racked with guilt as I am.

Fivethirtyeight.com presented the "dramatic" discovery that "Scott Brown is More Liberal Than Olympia Snowe, and Now He's Pivotal, Too."

I noticed something else, however, that was more shocking!

Take a close look at the spreadsheets.

Russ Feingold comes in way down on the list as the 57th most liberal senator, three places ahead of Ben Nelson.

Guess who came in at number 50, seven places ahead of Feingold!

Included in Rasmussen Reports today:

...56% of Massachusetts voters named health care as the most important issue. That suggests it was a big issue, but Democrat Martha Coakley actually won among those voters by a 53% to 46% margin.

In other words, health-care reform was not the cause of Scott Brown's victory yesterday.