Saturday is a big day in the Senate for ObamaCare.  Congressional Quarterly reported that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will unveil his manager’s package of changes to the Senate version of ObamaCare on Saturday morning and immediately file cloture to shut off debate on the package.  This package of changes to the bill and special interest projects were crafted by Reid to buy the support of members wavering in his caucus, including Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE), Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Jim Webb (D-VA).

Nobody knows if any acceptable compromise is possible at this point in the debate.  Liberals in the Democrat Caucus are mad because the public option has been scrapped and moderates are concerned that this bill has become so politically unpopular that a vote for any version of ObamaCare is the functional equivalent of political suicide.  If the Reid Amendment passes, then the President will be one step closer to victory.  If ObamaCare goes down in flames, then Monday may prove to be the President and Senator Harry Reid’s health care Waterloo.

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We are definitely NOT suggesting that God, Mother Nature or even Zeus has an interest in whether or not the United States adopts socialized medicine. That said, if you wanted this health care-stink bomb to pass, you would be hard-pressed to imagine a WORSE time for DC to be buried in a blizzard. To pass ObamaCare (Version 7.0) by Christmas, the Senate needs to start certain procedures tomorrow…and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Brigadoon) isn’t even in town

With the Senate having gone to the dogs, I thought it was appropriate that I share with two of my doggie friends a little ode to Christmas.

From the Associated Press:

President Barack Obama declared Friday a “meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough” had been reached among the U.S., China and three other countries on a global effort to curb climate change but said much work was still be needed to reach a legally binding treaty.

“It is going to be very hard, and it’s going to take some time,” he said near the conclusion of a 193-nation global warming summit. “We have come a long way, but we have much further to go.”

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We’re going through some tough economic times right now, but this holiday season, take a moment to appreciate how good we really have it.

Need proof? Just think about how much Christmas presents sucked in the 1970s compared to today.

Thanks to our market-based system, we’re wealthier, we have more choices, and we enjoy more leisure time than ever before.

From all of us at Reason.tv, happy holidays!

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5. Hide the Decline: “Climategate” and the CO² ruling

Why it’s important: The unauthorized release in November of 61 megabytes of confidential files and emails hacked from the computers at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit – Ground Zero of the “anthropogenic global warming” racket – shocked nearly all sentient people into the realization that scientists could be just a corruptible as your average politician or, worse, your average “environmental journalists” as they sought to “hide the decline.” While each country’s capo di tutti capi was gathering in Copenhagen to hatch yet another scheme to beggar the industrialized West in the name of collective guilt, the scandal burbled along under the radar as rational people finally had the proof they needed that the Chicken Little alarmists were, well – crowing capons.  For years, skeptics had been derided by such barking lunatics as Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., as “deniers” – the word was deliberately loaded to evoke the Holocaust – even as the Man Who Flunked Out of Divinity School did his best to dodge all challenges to his newfound religion:

Meanwhile, with AGW going up in smoke like a fruitless sacrifice to a god that failed, and the Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” extortion bill faltering in Congress, along came the EPA, right on schedule, with its “endangerment finding” that carbon dioxide – you know, the stuff you breathe out when you exhale, and the same stuff that makes the good green plants happy, healthy and wise – is, of all things, a “pollutant.”  Still, the news for the Karbon Krazies just keeps on getting worse.

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We know how liberals, particularly those in the education establishment, like to say that Corporate America dictates public policy through campaign contributions.

A new report, prepared by the Center for Responsive Politics and the National Institute on Money in State Politics, does a good job of dispelling that myth.

As it turns out, the National Education Association was by far the nation’s biggest political contributor during the 2008 election cycle. The NEA dropped a cool $56.3 million on its list of favored liberal candidates at various levels of government, which was about $12 million more than the runner-up contributor spent.

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P.J. O’Rourke attended the World Environment Summit in Rio de Janiero in 1992, the confab that gave us the first “global warming” treaty, a document which Kyoto amended and the ongoing Copenhagen meeting is also to amend to get Kyoto II. There, he wrote, in the scrum caused by typical UN ineptitude an earnest lass cried out something along the lines of “this is what life would be like in an overpopulated world!” To which O’Rourke replied, no, dear, this is what life would be like in a world run by the United Nations.

Well, similarly, you may by now have heard that Copenhagen is proceeding in even worse than normal fashion, thanks to 45,00 attendees — either Party, Observer or Media — having been accredited. The hall being used holds 15,000. The spillover is not so much from the welfare-seeking countries and their delegates but delegates from non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These include mostly green pressure groups but also groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Chamber of Commerce.

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Over the years I’ve come to think of organizations as living beings – with an amorphous body, ideas as its defense mechanism, and an insatiable appetite for growth. A virtual organism if you will. And as we know with any organism, when cornered it will do (or say) just about anything to survive.

In its quest to pass health care reform, being cornered is the plight of the virtual organism we call The Administration.

We don’t know the intricacies of the current Senate bill being drafted behind closed doors. But what we do know is that one of its cornerstones is government imposed, individual mandates for health insurance. If this element is left in the bill, our government will be given the power to force individuals into purchasing health insurance, or else be fined – giving new meaning to the term cost of living.

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As Fiscal Year 2010 finally begins, a judge has struck down Congress’ law ending federal funding of ACORN. It’s ironic in that de-funding ACORN was the only example of fiscal restraint we’ve seen from Barack Obama, even more so since he’s now stacking the courts with judges that will continue to issue such rulings. And perhaps that’s what he’s wanted all along.

ACORN has shown America what the audacity of hope really looks like. In the aftermath of the videos showing ACORN employees engaged in conversations that should have triggered a federal racketeering probe for tax fraud and underage prostitution, Congress reacted to the overwhelming public revulsion to ACORN by enacting a federal law blocking ACORN from receiving any more of your tax money.

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When the AARP began its full-throated support for the President’s Health Care Scheme many wondered why this venerable organization would support a plan which would  cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare, mostly by putting strict price controls on the very popular Medicare Advantage program.

By putting enormous price controls (cuts) in the Medicare Advantage program, many seniors will be forced to look to the other Medicare supplemental offer, MediGap.   It just so happens that AARP sells MediGap coverage to its members.  The income generated from those sales accounts for 60.3% of AARP’s revenues, ten years ago, this income only accounted for 10% of their budget.

So, in short, the Obama Health Care Scheme puts hundreds of millions of dollars in AARP’s coffers by forcing seniors off of Medicare Advantage and into MediGap programs.  You would think that this was enough of a payback to the AARP for their support.  But Big Government now reveals another little prize that has been awarded to AARP in time for their recent official endorsement of the Senate Bill.

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With Christmas coming up, we wanted to spend some time on books we think are worthy of giving to your friends and even, perhaps, your enemies. My personal choice for that would be The End of Secularism, written by Hunter Baker, JD, PhD, longtime contributor to the American Spectator, The City and what feels like dozens of blogs. Published by Crossway Books, The End of Secularism is an important book, one that I highly recommend — and it’s been the subject of some fascinating podcasts on faith, politics and the public square.

So in today’s special edition of The New Ledger podcast, I ask Dr. Baker questions like: “During a passage on Marxism and science, you give a nod to Whittaker Chambers’ acknowledgment that by shifting from the side of communism to the side of its opponents, he was joining the losing side. This year marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and it seems clear history proved Chambers wrong, at least in the form of communism he opposed. Do you think that communism’s force lives on in the less violent but still all-encompassing secularism of today — on issues like climate change and economic socialism? And second, do you think that those who strive against secularism today are on the losing side of history?”

The End of Secularism comes highly recommended by bestselling author Andrew Klavan, who says: “This is a very well written, concise and learned primer on the secularization of the public square. It gives a fair recital of the arguments in favor of it, and a strong but sensible and moderate outline of the arguments against. It has a firm grasp of history and neither falls for the usual ‘This is a Christian country!’ rhetoric that makes its way onto television nor accepts the ’separation of church and state,’ pieties that were rendered obsolete by the state’s aggressive intrustion into what Dr. Baker calls ‘the life-world,’ i.e. our values and private lives. It’s a book you’ll be glad you read the next time you get in an argument about religion’s role in politics.” I hope you’ll consider it as a gift this Christmas.

As always, you can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

While everyone has been paying close attention to the sexcapades of Tiger Woods, almost nobody has paid any attention to the revelations surrounding Senator Max Baucus, who is allegedly a man.

You might know that the Senator was having an extra-marital affair with a subordinate on his staff.

You might know that Senator Baucus recommended his girlfriend for a sweet job, and gave her massive pay raises.

Washington (CNN) – Montana Sen. Max Baucus gave an employee with whom he later became romantically involved a raise of nearly $14,000 and recommended her for a U.S. attorney position, his spokesman confirmed Friday.

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Because nobody who’s anybody reads the The New York Times these days, except the die-harders and dead-enders along West End Avenue, as well as the editors of Time and Newsweek, you may not know who “Clueless” Clark Hoyt is, but it really doesn’t matter because he doesn’t know who you are, either.  For those scoring at home in their pajamas, Mr. Hoyt is the “public editor” of the Times, i.e. the hapless fellow who has to write those tedious Sunday reports to the readers, in which he explains why whatever the Times did was right and whatever they didn’t do… well, hey, they didn’t know about it!  What do you think they are, a “newspaper of record” or something?

Some editors told me they were not immediately aware of the Acorn videos on Fox, YouTube and a new conservative Web site called BigGovernment.com.  When the Senate voted to cut off all federal funds to Acorn, there was not a word in the newspaper, although a report in the Caucus blog that day covered the action. When the New York City Council froze all its funding for Acorn and the Brooklyn district attorney opened a criminal investigation, there was still nothing.

Well Mr. Hoyt, welcome to the world of the “undernews” – Mickey Kaus’s apt word for the news that everyone in the blogosphere knows about but, apparently, no one who gets his news strictly from the Times, other major newspapers, the newsweeklies, and most of the networks has the slightest inkling of.

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Received a deck of these in the mail recently. Its the perfect stocking stuffer! And, a great thing to pull out about 5 hours into your next poker game. Or, you can just keep them as a handy reference for future resignations. Van Jones is already out. Is Kevin Jennings next?

More info here. (And, yes, Mr. FTC, we received exactly one deck of cards. Retail value: $10.95)

Politicians, pundits, and citizens have long bemoaned the power that “special interests” wield in Washington, D.C. and state capitals across the nation. The pharmaceutical, energy, and defense industries and everyone in between employ armies of lobbyists to educate elected officials on their respective industry interests and to persuade them to protect said interests.  Other groups represent the concerns of a body of constituents, such as general taxpayer, second amendment, or pro-life groups.

Despite the soiling of the term “lobbyist,” particularly following the fall of Jack Abramoff, these activities are protected under the First Amendment – and rightfully so.  If it weren’t for second amendment groups, Chicago, where I currently dwell, would not have a powerful coalition challenging the city’s irrational, unconstitutional handgun ban in the Supreme Court. The majority of Americans own stock – stock in corporations.  In today’s legislative environment, corporations would do a disservice to their shareholders not to go to bat for their interests in the Beltway ball game.

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Barack Obama’s public approval rating has dropped to as low as 47% in the last week, according to Gallup.  Although the President will not appear on the ballot again until 2012, how the public views his presidency will have a direct impact on each party’s performance in next year’s mid-term elections.

The party holding the White House has lost seats in 10 of the last 12 mid-terms, going back to President Kennedy’s 1962 losses.  Even in that year, with a 74% approval rating following the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy’s Democrats lost seats in the House.  Historically, the public uses mid-term elections to correct for the perceived excesses of the party in power, while the absence of coattail effects may result in some seats reverting back to the party with the natural advantage in the district.

IMPACT ON CONGRESSIONAL RACES.  The magnitude of the net losses suffered by the President’s party in Congress has been in direct, inverse proportion to the President’s public approval rating on Election Day.  The party in control of the White House suffered the most in 1966, 1974 and 1994 when the incumbent’s approval ratings were all under 50%.  High approval ratings of President Clinton in 1998 (66%) and President Bush in 2002 (63%) helped the governing party gain seats in those two years — a historical aberration.

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[Ed: This excerpt is Part 3 from a series originally reported by City Hall. Part I can be seen here, Part II can be seen here. Lead reporter on the investigative series was Edward-Isaac Dovere.]

The Working Families Party has irregularly reported rent payments over the years on its state campaign finance disclosures, leading some to question whether the Party has been getting what could be considered large in-kind contributions in the form of office space.

Also among the recipients of rent payments was an entity called NYOSCI, listed on multiple documents as having an address in New Orleans identical to one used by many ACORN entities on incorporation documents.

NYOSCI has been the recipient of most of the Party’s recent rent payments, though some have also been made to Community Labor Administrative Services, a group also reporting the 2-4 Nevins Street address on records with the State Board of Elections.

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From The Hill:

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has informed two House Republicans that it will investigate ACORN’s use of federal funds.

The GAO sent a letter to Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, informing them of its decision. Smith and Issa on Thursday released the letter, dated Dec. 7

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