As ThinkProgress reported yesterday, a Mississippi school district has canceled this year’s prom at Itawamba Agricultural High School following the Mississippi American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) request that the school allow a lesbian couple to attend. The school cited “distractions to the educational process caused by recent events” as reason for canceling the event, but 18-year-old Constance McMillen, a lesbian who wanted to bring her girlfriend to the prom, said the decision was based on “retaliation” for speaking out. Now, the ACLU will sue the high school, calling upon it to reinstate its prom for April 2:

The American Civil Liberties Union will sue a Mississippi high school after it canceled its prom this year rather than let a lesbian student bring her girlfriend as a date. The suit in the U.S. district court for northern Mississippi calls for Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton to reinstate the prom on April 2.

“All I wanted was the same chance to enjoy my prom night like any other student,” Constance McMillen, the 18-year-old senior, said in a statement on Thursday. “But my school would rather hurt all the students than treat everyone fairly. This isn’t just about me and my rights anymore — now I’m fighting for the right of all the students at my school to have our prom.” [...]

“Itawamba school officials are trying to turn Constance into the villain who called the whole thing off, and that just isn’t what happened,” said Kristy Bennett, legal director for the ACLU of Mississippi. “She’s fighting for everyone to be able to enjoy the prom. The government, and that includes public schools, can’t censor someone’s free expression just because some other person might not like it.”

If the school refuses to reinstate its prom, the students have another option. After hearing about the students’ predicament, a New Orleans hotel owner has offered to pay for the students to come to New Orleans and use one of his hotel facilities for their prom.

“Israel has sealed off the West Bank for 48 hours, preventing Palestinians from entering Israel” due to increasing unrest in the Palestinian territory. There have been ongoing clashes between police and protesters in the West Bank for weeks, “sparked by deadlock in peace talks and Israel’s inclusion of two West Bank shrines on a list of national heritage sites.”

Fox News host Glenn Beck’s recent attack on churches that preach about social justice has “prompted outrage from several Christian bloggers.” Rev. Jim Wallis, who leads the Christian antipoverty group Sojourners, called on Christians to leave Beck. “What he has said attacks the very heart of our Christian faith,” Wallis wrote.

A Democratic leadership source told CNN Radio that the legislative push to finish health care reform “begins Monday when the House Budget Committee is expected to vote on a key procedural piece of the health care package.” The “measure will not contain new policy language,” but will begin “the process, known as reconciliation, that Democrats are using to pass and change the Senate health care bill.”

Nearly 10,000 “rescue and cleanup workers at ground zero [of the World Trade Center attacks] who sued the city over damage to their health” have been awarded a $657.5 million settlement. The plaintiffs have been suffering from ailments such as asthma for years following the rescue efforts.

President Obama said yesterday that he would push for an overhaul of the nation’s immigration system if he could attract significant Republican support. However, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said Obama could lose GOP backing if reconciliation is used to pass measures related to health care reform.

“The Obama administration has settled on Janet L. Yellen, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, to serve as vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve,” a senior administration official told the New York Times. Yellen, who was widely considered to be the front-runner for the position, “would succeed Donald L. Kohn, who intends to retire when his four-year term expires in June.”

The housing market “is facing swelling ranks of homeowners who are seriously delinquent but have yet to lose their homes” — threatening “a new wave of foreclosures that could hit just as the real estate market has begun to stabilize.” Economists say it could take years for the nearly 7 million homes eligible for foreclosure to be “put on the market and purchased by new owners.”

“Democratic Congressional leaders struck a tentative agreement” yesterday to bundle an overhaul of federal student loan programs “into an expedited budget package along with” a health care bill. The move “breathes new life” in the loan plan and would allow “both measures to be passed by the Senate on a simple majority vote.”

President Obama announced the names of the charities he will donate his $1.4 million in Nobel Prize winnings to yesterday. The Fisher House, a nonprofit that assists military families, the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund, and the Afghanistan-Pakistan based Central Asia Institute will receive the most money.

And finally: Fox News host Glenn Beck thinks Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” is “anti-American” “propaganda.”

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Despite the backlash from prominent conservative lawyers against Liz Cheney and Keep America Safe’s “al Qaeda 7″ ad that questions the loyalty of Justice Department lawyers who worked on behalf of detainees, some on the right have risen to Cheney’s defense. On Monday, torture advocate Marc Thiessen dedicated his new Washington Post column to defending the ad, saying that Cheney asked “legitimate questions about Obama administration lawyers who defended America’s terrorist enemies.” Keep America Safe subsequently referred reporters to Thiessen’s column when asked to comment on the conservative criticism.

Today, Thiessen is up with another defense of the Cheney-led attacks, writing on the Washington Post’s PostPartisan blog that defenders of the Justice Department lawyers are wrong to invoke John Adams’ defense of British soldiers after the Boston massacre:

Defenders of the habeas lawyers representing al-Qaeda terrorists have invoked the iconic name of John Adams to justify their actions, claiming these lawyers are only doing the same thing Adams did when he defended British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre. The analogy is clever, but wholly inaccurate.

For starters, Adams was a British subject at the time he took up their representation. The Declaration of Independence had not yet been signed, and there was no United States of America. The British soldiers were Adams’ fellow countrymen — not foreign enemies of the state at war with his country.

Thiessen’s argument that Adams was defending “fellow countrymen” and “not foreign enemies” is clever, but it’s undermined by the fact that some of the lawyers Thiessen and the ad impugn did work on behalf of American citizens. In a National Review blog post promoting his PostPartisan column, Thiessen directly attacks a lawyer who advocated on behalf of a detained American citizen:

Eric Holder vs. John Adams [Marc Thiessen]

I have a piece up for the Washington Post explaining why the al-Qaeda lawyers are wrong to wrap themselves in the mantle of John Adams. Thanks to the spade work of Bill Burck and Dana Perino, we now know why Holder was stonewalling on the identities of the “Al Qaeda 7” — he was one of them! If Holder and co. are simply carrying on the traditions of John Adams, why were they hiding their roles in seeking the release of enemy combatants? If they are proud of their work, why don’t they stand up and say so?

Yesterday, Perino and Burck published an article on National Review Online detailing how Holder contributed to, but neglected to tell the Senate about, an amicus brief to the Supreme Court supporting Jose Padilla, an American citizen who was held as an enemy combatant. Another one of the lawyers smeared by the ad, Joseph Guerra, now Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General, worked on a brief urging that the Supreme Court hear Padilla’s case. Another DoJ lawyer, Assistant Attorney General Tony West, worked on the case of “American Taliban” Johh Walker Lindh, an American citizen.

The discrepancy between Thiessen’s PostPartisan argument and the facts is indicative of his arguments in general. In discussing another one of Thiessen’s inconsistent arguments, Time’s Michael Scherer — who considers Thiessen’s vocal crusade to defend the Bush administration’s torture policies “a good thing” — remarked that he was “disappointed with the quality of Thiessen’s arguments, which seem to be designed more for cable news soundbites than for serious discussion.”

Glaad reports that sponsors have “refused to allow” American figure skater Johnny Weir to join the Stars on Ice Tour because they deemed him “not family friendly.” While Weir — a three-time national champion — has never “officially announced his sexual orientation, he has garnered a significant amount of LGBT fans” and is also known for his flashy costumes. Weir won an online poll that asked fans who they wanted to see in the tour, but Stars on Ice seems to have barred him because of his “perceived sexual orientation”:

To say that Weir is “not family friendly” would be a clear jab at his perceived sexual orientation. Weir is extremely involved with his family. He is putting his younger brother through college, and supports the family financially because his father’s disability prohibits him from working. Weir’s dedication to his family can be clearly documented in the Sundance series, Be Good Johnny Weir, which follows him and his family and friends through his life and career as a championship skater.

After a sixth place finish at the Vancouver Olympics, Weir announced he would take a break from competitive skating, but Glaad notes that “does not release the Stars on Ice sponsors from asking him to participate.”

Fox News host Glenn Beck has made a trademark of propagating outlandish conspiracy theories and far-right rhetoric, but his employers at Fox have long claimed that his views do not reflect the network’s. On his radio show today, however, Beck revealed that in a private meeting, a Fox vice president endorsed his apocalyptic fear-mongering, telling Beck that “everything you’ve been talking about is coming”:

BECK: [A] global economic holocaust is coming. I don’t know when it’s coming, but it is coming. And I was in this meeting and I pulled one of the guys out, he’s a vice president of Fox. And I said, “When I first started working with you — let’s have a frank conversation here — you thought I was nuts.” And he smiled and he said, “No, I would say I just thought you were on the cutting edge.” And I said, “okay, alright, sure.” I said, “Now?” He said, “Glenn, everything you’re talking about is coming. Everything you’re talking about — everything you’ve been talking about for the last year and a half. It’s all here now. And what you’re saying is coming, I don’t see any other way.” [...]

Now the question is, where do we go from here? … And he said to me, he said, “Glenn, the answer is, you’ve been saying it for a while,” he said, “but we have to convince the audience that this is really truly true. You are the key. You must be able to reach to your friends and your neighbors, you must, must, must, bring one person to the table.”

Listen here:

Last year, Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox’s parent company, stood by Beck after he told Fox and Friends that President Obama is a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people, or white culture.” And in January, Fox News President Roger Ailes defended Beck’s linking of President Obama and progressives to genocide. “He’s talking about Hitler and Stalin slaughtering people so I think he was probably accurate,” Ailes said.

In September, ThinkProgress reported that, despite its public support for health care reform, the insurance industry was engaged in a “duplicitous” campaign to undermine the effort. Recently, the National Journal confirmed our reporting by revealing that six of the top health insurance corporations had secretly pumped up to $20 million dollars into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for a $100-million-dollar attack ad campaign against health reform last year. This week, insurers purchased a new round of attack ads, again with millions laundered through the Chamber.

It’s not just the Chamber. As we have detailed, the health insurance industry also funds Newt Gingrich’s lobbying firm, which has helped to draft health legislation for Republican lawmakers — including bills aimed at deregulating the health insurance market — and advises GOP leaders on ways to kill reform.

Yesterday at the annual conference for America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the lobbying juggernaut for the health insurance industry, the industry again falsely claimed that it is fully behind health reform. ThinkProgress spoke to industry spokesman Robert Zirkelbach, who refused to acknowledge any other attack groups the industry may be funding. He also oddly claimed that funding attack ads and Gingrich is somehow consistent with the industry’s promise “to play, to contribute and to help pass health-care reform”:

TP: But you’ve been funding attack ads as well. … But it’s not just your individual members, AHIP funds Newt Gingrich’s group as well, directly. And he’s against health reform, he says ‘let’s kill the bill.’ That’s kind of contradicting your public statements that you support reform. I just don’t understand why you would fund an attack group if you’re really on board.

ZIRKELBACH: I think there’s broad agreement from stakeholders across the board that we need health care reform. But I think there’s also broad agreement that we need health care reform that’s actually going to work and health care reform that’s actually going to bring down health care costs. This legislation doesn’t do that. [...]

TP: But in the spirit of transparency, we didn’t find out about this $20 million dollars you gave to the Chamber to run these attack ads until a month ago, and these things have been going on for a year. So I’m just asking, are there any other groups, other than Newt Gingrich and the Chamber of Commerce that you’re funding, that are attacking health reform? That premium dollars are going to.

ZIRKELBACH: No. … Well, I don’t agree with your premise that we’re funding groups that you know are trying to you know that aren’t trying to make a health care system that’s going to work and bring down costs. [...] Every thing we’ve done throughout this debate has been focused on what can we do to advance health reform.

Watch it:

Former CIGNA executive Wendell Potter, who for years helped the health insurance industry kill reform before becoming a whistle blower, explained that AHIP regularly works behind closed doors to orchestrate a massive right-wing campaign against reform. In the past, health insurers have used third party PR firms to coordinate attack ads, talking points to conservative radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, and organizing efforts akin to today’s tea parties. As insurers continue to hike premiums for patients across the country, much of that money is not being spent on actual medical care. Instead, up to 20 percent (or 40 percent in the individual market) goes to profits, administrative costs, and lobbying to kill reform.

The Associated Press reports that Los Angeles Angels center fielder Torii Hunter “insists he meant no harm toward Latino players when he referred to them as ‘impostors.’” Hunter’s controversial remarks were made two weeks ago during a series of USA Today roundtables about baseball:

People see dark faces out there, and the perception is that they’re African American,” Los Angeles Angels center fielder Torii Hunter says. “They’re not us. They’re impostors.”

“As African-American players, we have a theory that baseball can go get an imitator and pass them off as us,” Hunter says. “It’s like they had to get some kind of dark faces, so they go to the Dominican or Venezuela because you can get them cheaper. It’s like, ‘Why should I get this kid from the South Side of Chicago and have Scott Boras represent him and pay him $5 million when you can get a Dominican guy for a bag of chips?’ I’m telling you, it’s sad.”

Now Hunter is describing his remarks as a “wrong word choice” and what he “meant to say” is that “there is a difference culturally. But on the field, we’re all brothers.” In an entry posted on his Angels-sponsored blog, Hunter wrote:

I am hurt by how the comments attributed to me went off the track and misrepresented how I feel. My whole identity has been about bringing people together, from my neighborhood to the clubhouse. The point I was trying to make was that there is a difference between black players coming from American neighborhoods and players from Latin America. In the clubhouse, there is no difference at all. We’re all the same.

USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, the journalist who quoted Hunter, said he spoke to Hunter after his blog post went up and that Hunter affirmed, “I’m not going to apologize. I told the truth. I’m sorry if I used the wrong choice of words, but impostor is not a racist word.” Meanwhile, Latino sports journalist Tony Menendez wrote, “Torii Hunter next time should think what he wants to say or get a dictionary…I really would like to know if on a similar interview a Latino player in a similar context would have said the word negro and then calling them ‘impostors’ in the majors.”

However, many Latinos in the baseball industry didn’t take Hunter’s comments to heart. “To me, it was a funny context. I know what he wanted to say, what he meant to say. I hope Latin players, and whoever speaks Spanish, and whoever feels Latino, doesn’t take this context in a different way,” said Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, a Venezuelan. Angels broadcaster Jose Mota, a Dominican, said he wasn’t offended and that “no Latin player would be offended either.” Hunter’s long-time agent cited Hunter’s impressive “record of giving,” which includes providing college scholarships to students and fostering youth inner-city baseball.

For the record, Alex Rodriguez, a third base player of Dominican descent, tops the list of the 35 Highest-Paid Major League Baseball players, which includes several Latinos. In December 2007, Rodriguez agreed to a 10-year $275 million contract with the Yankees, the richest contract in baseball history.

A Mississippi school district has canceled this year’s prom at Itawamba Agricultural High School after the Mississippi ACLU urged school officials to allow a lesbian couple to attend. Administrators turned down requests from 18-year-old Constance McMillen and her girlfriend, another student at the school, who planned on wearing a tuxedo. The school cited “distractions to the educational process caused by recent events” as reason for canceling the event, suggesting that “a private group host an independent prom instead.” McMillen, however, said the district’s decision was “retaliation” for speaking out:

“Oh, my God. That’s really messed up because the message they are sending is that if they have to let gay people go to prom that they are not going to have one,” she said. “A bunch of kids at school are really going to hate me for this, so in a way it’s really retaliation.”

School officials told McMillen last month that she could not bring her sophomore girlfriend to the prom and could not wear a tuxedo. The school then circulated a memo prohibiting same-sex dates.

“I asked my teacher about it, and she said, ‘Well, you have to remember where you are,’” McMillen said.

In neighboring Alabama last year, the Franklin County School system in Russellville “reversed its policy prohibiting a lesbian student from attending a prom with her girlfriend.” In Utah, the Salt Lake City-based Utah Pride Center hosts a gay prom every year, but “Executive Director Valerie Larabee said districts have not enforced same-sex date prohibitions for years.” In Los Angeles United School District schools, same-sex couples are permitted to attend the prom, and one of these schools has even elected a gay male prom queen.

– Nick McClellan

One of the right’s most often used scaremongering tactics is to warn of “liberal indoctrination” and to claim progressives are using schools to push their own agenda.

Fox News has been fanning the flames of this conspiracy theory in recent weeks with paranoid reporting about the Texas State Board of Education’s deliberations over how to alter its social studies curriculum. In a series of reports it is calling the “Texas Textbook Wars,” Fox has openly speculated that founding fathers such as George Washington are going to be removed from textbooks, Independence Day will be deleted, Christmas will be removed, and that the Texas Board of Education has reccomended starting the teaching of history at 1877.

ThinkProgress has compiled a montage of some of Fox’s outlandish and inaccurate claims. Watch it:

Now, the Texas Education Agency is firing back. It has put out a press release slamming Fox for “repeatedly [broadcasting] highly inaccurate information” and has done a point-by-point debunking of Fox’s fearmongering. Some of the debunks:

Fox: Independence Day and Veteran’s Day are being deleted from the textbooks.
The truth: Again, the new history textbooks have not been written yet but they will be based on the curriculum standards adopted by the board. The standards currently under consideration cover Independence Day in kindergarten, second and fifth grades. Veteran’s Day is included in kindergarten, first, second and fifth grades.

Fox: References to Christmas have been deleted.
The truth: A TEKS review committee briefly recommended removing Christmas from a list that mentioned one major holiday for each of the world’s religions. The committee recommended leaving Easter in the document. The State Board immediately rejected this idea and a reference to Christmas was restored in the standards months ago and can be found in sixth grade in standard 19(b).

The truth is, the Republican-dominated Texas Board of Education has been doing anything but deciding to use textbooks to indoctrinate students with liberal propoganda. After a heated debate this past January, the Board voted to have textbooks cover the Moral Majority and the Heritage Foundation, voted against requring the coverage of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and the country’s first hispanic Supreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, and decided to require textbooks to teach students the difference between legal and illegal immigration.

The New York Post reports that golfer Tiger Woods has hired former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer to help repair his public image:

Two sources in the golf community have told The Post that Ari Fleischer, the former presidential advisor to George W. Bush and the man who was brought in to help repair the steroid-shattered image of Mark McGwire, has been huddling with Woods, plotting a strategy for his return to golf — at the Arnold Palmer Invitational starting March 25 at Bay Hill in Orlando.

“They were in his living room this week going over a strategy for how to handle Bay Hill in two weeks,” one source told The Post.

Since his time as President Bush’s top spinmeister, Fleischer has become a consultant for the sports industry. Fleischer has advised Mark McGwire on his return to baseball and public admission about using steroids, the Green Bay Packers on “how to deal with the fallout from their breakup with Brett Favre” in 2008, and “college football’s BCS on how to repair an image that has been ridiculed.” Unclear whether Fleischer’s advice to Woods will include the Brit Hume suggestion to convert to Christianity.

The Associated Press reports that the New Jersey Supreme Court has chastised Superior Court Judge James N. Citta, who “belittled an immigrant defendant’s poor English skills and compared another defendant to O.J Simpson.”

Citta demeaned a Mexican immigrant who, after pleading guilty to violating his parole, explained that he failed to follow its terms because he didn’t speak or understand English and was provided with a parole officer who couldn’t speak or understand Spanish. According to the official complaint filed against the judge, Citta responded by engaging “in a gratuitous diatribe about immigration and his opinion of illegal aliens”:

CITTA: Now so let me understand this. Not only do we have to let him come into the country illegally and stay here, not only do we have to provide him with public assistance, not only do we have to provide him with free health care, not only do we have to provide him with a free attorney when he gets in trouble, now he wants a bilingual probation officer, because otherwise it’s inconvenient for him.

Well I think it’s a miracle you haven’t been sent back to Mexico as a result of being placed on probation and being charged with these crimes in the first place. If it was up to me, I’d take you just as you’re dressed and bound right now and have you escorted back to Mexico forthwith and forget the prison term, but it’s not.

In another instance, Citta compared defendant Earl Peeples to O.J. Simpson and “berate[d] the defendant at length”:

CITTA: You look up domestic violence in the dictionary, your picture should be next to it. The only difference between you and O.J. Simpson is he had more money and he got off for some reason in a land of fruits and nuts.

The complaint filed against Citta accused him of “creating an appearance of racial or ethnic bias.” In its decision, New Jersey’s high court’s Disciplinary Committee wrote, “We find that [Citta's] remarks were not only inappropriate but highly objectionable, at least outwardly indicative of bias, and wholly unbefitting a court of law.” In a letter to the court, Citta defended his words. Citta indicated that he was simply trying “to make a point” using language that those before him could understand. Citta, a judge in the criminal division of Superior Court, also wrote that his handling of “the most horrific, sadistic, and emotionally charged criminal trials and sentencings” was not his choice and that it has “exacted a toll which, on occasion, has led me to say things better left unsaid.”

Under Chairman Michael Steele, the Republican National Committee has been using controversial mailers posing as official Census documents to raise money. “Calling itself the ‘Congressional District Census,’ the letter comes in an envelope starkly printed with the words, ‘DO NOT DESTROY OFFICIAL DOCUMENT’ and describes itself, on the outside of the envelope, as a ‘census document,’” notes Politico. Although the mailers have been used before, they were heavily criticized this year because they coincide with the actual Census; many observers worried that people would confuse the two. Yesterday, the House voted 416-0 to ban “misleading mailings designed to appear they’re from the Census Bureau”:

The legislation passed 416-0, after two Republicans who sit on the House panel overseeing the census, Rep. Darrell Issa of California and Jason Chaffetz of Utah, agreed to co-sponsor the measure. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., has said he intends to move forward with legislation in the Senate.

“With millions of census forms due to hit mailboxes within days and a multimillion advertising campaign meant to encourage completion and return of those forms, too many nongovernmental organizations are trying to piggyback on that brand awareness,” said the bill’s chief sponsor, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y.

170 Republicans voted to ban the RNC letters, and Issa and Chaffetz blasted Steele’s tactics in a recent committee hearing on the matter. “I have seen the Republican Party send out documents that say ‘census.’ I think it’s wrong, I think it’s deceptive, and I wish they wouldn’t do it,” Chaffetz said. Steele recently defended the mailers, saying, “If it’s against the law, I won’t [send them]. Until such time, this is an aggressive fundraising season.” (HT: DailyKos)

Yesterday, StopBeck.com announced that TurboTax has become the 120th advertiser to drop Fox News host Glenn Beck. In an announcement on Twitter, TurboTax stated:

Thanks everyone for your feedback, & for reminding us of what we value. We’ve pulled advertising from the Glenn Beck show.

TurboTax’s decision to pull out of Beck’s show came just two days after the company began running ads, according to StopBeck.com. Additionally, “the broadcast of Glenn Beck’s show in the U.K. has been running without any advertisers for over a month now.” TurboTax’s announcement comes as Beck has begun endorsing Tax Resolution
Services, the latest in his line-up of questionable endorsement deals.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) issued a new directive yesterday distancing himself from Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s effort to strip protections for LGBT students from all state colleges and university non-discrimination policies. McDonnell initially supported Cuccinelli’s legal reasoning, but he subsequently received significant criticism from college students and faculty members. McDonnell’s directive does not have the authority of an executive order though.

“The Senate approved $140 billion in extended tax breaks and unemployment benefits” yesterday along a 62-36 vote. House Democrats have criticized the Senate legislation as too reliant on tax cuts. “That’s all well and good, but the real jobs are in [infrastructure spending],” said Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN) of the Senate bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said yesterday that he supports revising the Senate’s filibuster rules at the beginning of the next Congress. “The filibuster has been abused,” he said, adding that “the Republicans have abused that just like the spitball was abused in baseball and the four-corner offense was 93474.html">abused in basketball.”

“House Democratic leaders on Wednesday banned budget earmarks to private industry,” one of the biggest steps taken yet by Congress to combat earmark corruption. “The political reality right now is that the public has lost some confidence in this institution, and one of the reasons is the past abuses of the earmark process,” said Rep. David Obey (D-WI), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

A group of lawmakers from the Hispanic Caucus are threatening to vote against the health care bill unless certain immigration-related provisions are changed. The caucus members are opposed to Senate language that bars undocumented immigrants from buying insurance from the proposed exchanges with their own money; they plan to meet with the White House to discuss their concerns today.

President Obama is pushing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) “to go further than Obama has previously disclosed” to strip the special deals for individual senators from the final health care reform bill. These include Sen. Ben Nelson’s (D-NE) “Cornhusker Kickback” and a handful of other deals.

The Labor Department reported yesterday that 31 states and the District of Columbia reported net gains in employment in January, “providing further evidence that the economy is slowly gaining momentum.” The state-by-state Bureau of Labor Statistics data “suggested that employers have stopped firing workers and are starting to hire.”

“Previously undisclosed e-mail messages” provide new evidence about Sen. John Ensign’s (R-NV) “efforts to steer lobbying work to the embittered husband of his former mistress and could deepen his legal and political troubles.” The e-mails document Ensign’s suggestion “that a Las Vegas development firm hire the husband.”

And finally: Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), comic book character.

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Today, the House of Representatives is debating H. Con Res. 248, a privileged resolution brought to the floor by Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Walter Jones (R-NC), and others that required Congress to debate whether or not to continue the war in Afghanistan.

During one point in the debate, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) delivered an impassioned speech against escalating in Afghanistan and condemned the media for its wall-to-wall coverage of the scandal surrounding former Rep. Eric Massa while ignoring the Afghanistan debate in Congress:

KENNEDY: What is shameful is our policy that puts them in harm’s way when they don’t need to be … Finally, if anyone wants to know where citizens are, there’s two pres people in this gallery. We’re talking about Eric Massa 24-7 on the TV, we’re talking about war and peace, $3 billion, 1,000 lives and no press, you want to know why the American public is fit? They’re fit because they’re not seeing their Congress do the work they’re sent to do. It’s because the press, the press of the United States is not covering the most significant issue of national importance and that’s the laying of lives down in the nation for the service of our country. It’s despicable, the national press corps right now!

Watch it:

Soon after the speech, CNN host Rick Sanchez asked State of the Union host Candy Crowley to comment on Kennedy’s media complaint. Crowley mused that it could be argued “one way or another” whether the Massa scandal was as important as debating the war in Afghanistan, and even suggested that Kennedy made his speech because “the Democrats in particular and certainly…Kennedy would like the Massa story to go away“:

CROWLEY: I think think it is one that — what he is arguing — is that it is one of perspective and [he] obviously believes that Massa’s been given too much attention where the war in Afghanistan is not. You know, we could argue one way or the other, but it is very clear that he –the Democrats in particular and certainly Congressman Kennedy in specific would like the Massa story to go away.

Watch it:

Given that 895 American soldiers have died in combat in Afghanistan and the U.S. is spending $101 million a day on the war — which has lasted longer that World War II — there are plenty of good reasons for Congressional Democrats to be debating an exit strategy from Afghanistan other than to distract from a minor scandal.

One of the greatest hardships facing America’s college students is student debt; the average student in the class of 2008 graduated with $23,000 of debt, “a figure 25 percent higher than what their older brothers and sisters owed when they graduated from college in 2004.”

To tackle this student debt crisis, last year the House of Representatives passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), which expands and improves successful student aid programs like the Pell Grant and the Perkins Loan program, and eliminates billions of dollars in subsidies to wasteful private lenders by arranging loans directly with students instead of through bank middlemen.

The Senate is currently deliberating over its own version of the bill, and it is one Senate floor vote away from being signed into law by the President. However, the student lending industry has launched an “aggressive lobbying campaign” of senators representing states where big lenders are based, scaremongering about job losses resulting from passing SAFRA. Now, it appears that their lobbying is paying off, as six Democratic senators have written to Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, asking him to “consider potential alternative legislative proposals” to SAFRA’s major lending reforms:

Six Democrats signaled deep concerns with their chamber’s student lending reform bill on Tuesday, imploring party leaders to “consider potential alternative legislative proposals” in the coming days.

That could spell trouble for Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and other Democratic leaders, who once hoped to advance the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act to the president’s desk using the chamber’s 50-vote reconciliation process.

In a brief letter dated Tuesday, Democratic Sens. Bill Nelson (Fl.), Tom Carper (Del.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Jim Webb (Va.), Mark Warner (Va.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.) describe reform to the country’s “higher education funding” system as a “priority.” But the group…also express concerns the Senate’s lending bill could ultimately result in local job loss.

While the senators may be claiming that passing SAFRA would result in job losses in their states, the truth is that it would be minimal at worst. The fact is that only 30,000 people at most are employed in the student lending industry. And because the companies would still be in charge of servicing all the government issued loans, servicing jobs could actually increase. For example, “Nelnet (Ben Nelson’s biggest donor) saw their servicing revenues [increase] 13% in 2009 as a result of a contract they won to service student loans for the Department of Education.”

One way to avoid a filibuster by Republicans and lender-friendly Democrats is to pass SAFRA with the health care legislation in one reconciliation bill. The Hill reports that “a Democratic official familiar with negotiations” over the student lending bill has told them that the leadership has already decided to “pair [the] overhaul of student lending with healthcare reform,” although Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) office says “no final decision has been made.” Using reconciliation for a major education reform bill would hardly be without precedent. In 2007, the Senate passed the College Cost Reduction Act of 2007 through the reconciliation process by an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 79-12.

Repeating conservative lies about reconciliation, Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell today that reconciliation for health care reform “procedurally cannot be done.” Claiming it was never used for major legislation without “overwhelming bipartisan support,” Bond predicted the Senate will ultimately not be able to pass the health care bill through the reconciliation process:

BOND: Well, first of all the president shouldn’t get his allies to cram through on reconciliation, something to which the American people overwhelmingly object. They object to reconciliation. It was never meant to pass major substantive changes, whether they are trying to make a bad bill slightly less worse. No matter how much you put on the outhouse, it would still smell bad.

MITCHELL: Well, that may be a great Missouri expression but that same outhouse was used for the bush tax cuts and for other major legislation in republican years. why shouldn’t the democrats do exactly what the republicans have been doing?

BOND: Major legislation was passed on reconciliation. Everything from the civil rights to social security passed, overwhelming bipartisan support. Reconciliation was meant to deal only with revenue issues, like — dealing with taxes and spending. Not making substantive changes, which the Speaker is trying to convince the house democrats will be made. They will not be made because procedurally it cannot be done.

Watch it:

Bond’s argument is wrong on several counts. Congressional Democrats do not plan to use reconciliation to make “major substantive changes,” but rather to modify revenue issues, like taxes and spending, while keeping most of the bill that already passed the Senate intact.

Regardless, Bond voted for “substantive” bills using the reconciliation process when he was part of the Republican-controlled Senate under President Bush. They used reconciliation to pass “major” domestic policy legislation, including the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, and important changes to health care policy. In 2005, Bond railed against the filibuster — the use of which has forced Democrats to consider using reconciliation — calling it a “product” of recent Senate rules that “does not derive from the authority of the Constitution.”

Regarding his claim of bipartisan support for reconciliation bills in the past, the Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky has documented how the Senate under Bush passed three reconciliation bills with three or fewer Democratic votes. The 2003 Bush tax cuts were supported by only two Democrats and needed Vice President Cheney’s tie-breaking vote.

And the American people do not “overwhelmingly object” to using reconciliation for health care. A recent Progressive Change Campaign Committee poll of key states found majorities would not “object to the Senate’s use of ‘reconciliation’ rules to pass that bill with a majority vote.” Even 58 percent of people from Bond’s state of Missouri said they would not object.

America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the lobbying juggernaut for the health insurance industry, hosted its annual conference at the Ritz Carlton this week. As a vote on health legislation nears, the industry announced yesterday that it is funding a new round of national ads aimed at killing reform. The insurance industry has attacked every version of health reform thus far, from the Senate Finance bill, to the bill that passed the House already, to measures proposed by the White House. On a call with investors, Goldman Sachs detailed how health insurers would benefit the most from not passing any health reform all.

Even if reform passes, political attack groups funded by big business, like the Club for Growth, and Republicans are promising to repeal health legislation, rescinding coverage for over 30 million Americans and perpetuating widespread industry abuses. In addition to leaders like Newt Gingrich (who is funded by AHIP and other insurers), National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and dozens of GOP House and Senate leaders have pledged to repeal health reform if they are successful in the midterm elections.

ThinkProgress caught up with Robert Zirkelbach, the spokesman for AHIP, after a press briefing at the conference to ask about the GOP effort to repeal health reform. Zirkelbach carefully dodged the question directly, but left the door open to possibly supporting such an effort in the future:

TP: Let’s say the current reform bills you’ve registered disapproval with, let’s say they pass in their current form. Would you support a Republican effort, the Republican campaign promise to repeal some or all of the bill?

ZIRKELBACH: I’m not going to speculate about health reform legislation, what’s going to happen after, when we haven’t seen the current bill. I think we’re a ways a way [crosstalk] I’m not going to begin to speculate about whats going to happen.

Watch it:

Yesterday at the AHIP conference, Steve ErkenBrack, a health insurance executive from Colorado, mused about what it would take for political leaders to stop the “demonization” of insurers. He then suggested that insurance company executives had to simply “wait until November [elections] get passed,” presumably when the GOP either retakes Congress or a large number of seats. Listen here:

As ThinkProgress has documented, AHIP has waged a two-faced campaign to kill reform. Understanding that health insurers are unpopular, AHIP has tried to defray potential criticism by telling the administration and the public that “this time” the industry will fully support health reform. However, insurers have quietly been working behind closed doors to kill health reform, secretly funding $20 million plus in attack ads, orchestrating a far right effort to declare reform unconstitutional, and directing employees to attend rowdy anti-health reform protests.

In his book that was released this week, former top Bush aide Karl Rove claimed that President Bush would not have authorized an invasion of Iraq in 2003 if he had known Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. “Would the Iraq War have occurred without W.M.D.? I doubt it,” Rove writes. “The Bush administration itself would probably have sought other ways to constrain Saddam, bring about regime change, and deal with Iraq’s horrendous human rights violations.”

The New York Times’ Peter Baker asked Rove about that comment and noted that Rove still justifies the invasion anyway. “Do you really think the Iraq war was worth it?” Baker asked. “The world is a better place,” Rove said. When Baker asked about other justifications the administration used for war (human rights and spreading democracy) Rove accused the Times reporter of talking about “hypotheticals” and that it was the Bush White House that was dealing with “reality“:

ROVE: You’re talking about hypotheticals. What we were talking about was the practical reality that in the aftermath of 9/11 we had somebody who was refusing to abide by international weapons inspections and live up to the agreement that he made after the first Gulf War. And whom every Western intelligence agency believed had weapons of mass destruction. That was a calculus in the aftermath of 9/11 that we could not tolerate. We had to deal with the world as we knew it, as we thought we knew it.

Except the “reality” was that Saddam Hussein didn’t have WMD. Moreover, in the months before the invasion, Saddam did, in fact, allow U.N. weapons inspectors into Iraq, who, according to a report commissioned by President Bush himself after the war, had disproved intelligence on Iraq’s WMD before the war. Yet, the Bush White House dismissed their findings:

By the time President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein of the deadly weapons he was allegedly trying to build, every piece of fresh evidence had been tested — and disproved — by U.N. inspectors, according to a report commissioned by the president and released Thursday.

The work of the inspectors — who had extraordinary access during their three months in Iraq between November 2002 and March 2003 — was routinely dismissed by the Bush administration and the intelligence community in the run-up to the war, according to the commission led by former senator Charles S. Robb (D-Va.) and retired appellate court judge Laurence H. Silberman.

On NBC yesterday, Rove argued that there was a “worldwide consensus” before the invasion that Iraq had WMD. Apparently, expert weapons inspectors on the ground in Iraq did not fall into that category.

Thus it’s unclear what “practical reality” Rove is referring to, seeing the “reality” was that Iraq didn’t have WMD — thus dislodging the main case for war and thereby making the entire effort impractical.

On Monday, hate radio host Rush Limbaugh pledged to leave the country and go to Costa Rica if Congress successfully passes and implements its health care legislation. Yesterday, Limbaugh claimed that he never said he’d leave the country. The host explained that what he meant was that he would go to Costa Rica to “get major medical care,” meaning he’d travel there exclusively to use their health care system:

LIMBAUGH: I did not say I’m going to Costa Rica. The stupid people in the media who cannot trouble themselves to read my transcripts or listen to this program, listen to out of context stuff. I was asked yesterday where will I go for health care if Obama’s health care passes, and I said if doctors here are not permitted to form private practice little clinics with individuals paying a fee, a retainer, and for services, then I’ll go to Costa Rica to get major medical health care. I didn’t say I would move there. They’re all over these websites: “Limbaugh says he’d move to Costa Rica. Why, what more incentive do we have to pass health care to get Limbaugh to move to Costa Rica?” Now, New Zealand is reading about this and they’re all bent out of shape that I’m somehow not coming there, all because of the stupid media. They are not competing for me because Costa Rica doesn’t think I’m going to move there, which I wouldn’t. Gosh.

Listen to it:

What is ironic about Limbaugh — who has ranted about the dangers of “socialized health care” for years — seeking health care in Costa Rica is that the country has a hybrid government-private health care system that provides comprehensive universal coverage to all of its residents. The government owns several major public hospitals and operates small clinics in almost every community. Workers are required to contribute 15% of their salaries to health insurance and the unemployed “obtain public funding for all health services, including prescription drugs.” Most Costa Ricans obtain their health care through a public plan called the Caja — similar to our Medicare or the proposed public option.

Costa Rica’s system of universal coverage is so effective that it actually ranks one slot above the United States in the World Health Organization’s ranking of health systems worldwide while actually spending less per capita than we do. Does Limbaugh’s threat to seek health care on Costa Rica mean that the radio host is endorsing a similar system for the United States?