Pass. The. Damn. Bill.

Pivoting off a post by Jonathan Bernstein, Chait wonders whether the House or Senate is a bigger hang-up:

The whole reason the House distrusts the Senate is that the Senate has a filibuster, which has meant that every single Democrat must hold together in the fact of GOP obstructionism in order to pass anything substantial. To pass a reconciliation patch, the Senate can afford to lose nine Democrats, which makes it a piece of cake. Which is to say, the House is acting irrationally. It needs to pass the Senate bill and trust that 50 Democrats can be found to carry out a verbal agreement.

The flip side, of course, is that the irrational distrust of the Senate is part of what gives the House leverage here. In a negotiation where both sides have a strong incentive to compromise but the parameters of agreement are wide, the side that can more credibly threaten to walk away has an advantage — which is to say, the crazy man wins.

Fundamentalists And Marriage

From Scott Anderson's article on Mormon polygamists:

Not all FLDS women are quite so sanguine about plural marriage. Dorothy Emma Jessop is a spry, effervescent octogenarian who operates a naturopathic dispensary in Hildale. Sitting in her tiny shop surrounded by jars of herbal tinctures she ground and mixed herself, Dorothy admits she struggled when her husband began taking on other wives. "To be honest," she says, "I think a lot of women have a hard time with it, because it's not an easy thing to share the man you love. But I came to realize this is another test that God places before you—the sin of jealousy, of pride—and that to be a godly woman, I needed to overcome it."

What seems to help overcome it is an awareness that a woman's primary role in the FLDS is to bear and raise as many children as possible, to build up the "celestial family" that will remain together for eternity.

Faces Of The Day

Upsidedown

From Cool Hunting:

Photographer Brandon Voges came up with a simple and surprisingly novel idea: photograph portraits of people hanging upside down by their ankles. Then invite your closest friends to do the same. The resulting eerie series "Upside Downey Face" is a collection of unsettling, strange images of people flipped the wrong way up.

A Democracy Without Accountability

HOLDERAlexWong:Getty

We’ve been waiting for months to see what’s in the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility but the Obama administration’s point-blank refusal to investigate, let alone prosecute, the war crimes of its predecessors has stalled it for more than a year. We are now told by Newsweek that the establishment – surprise! – will let itself off:

While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor—violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action—which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.

Just as the CIA will never allow its staffers to be held accountable for anything; just as the DHS and the intelligence services would never hold anyone in their ranks accountable for the undie-bomber plot; so the DOJ will never allow its past members be held accountable even for war crimes.

Some wonder why the public distrusts Washington. But over the last few years, the rank stench coming from its self-serving elites should be enough to disturb anyone with a sense of smell. 

(Photo: Eric Holder by Alex Wong/Getty.)

It’s Alive!

As nihilist Republicans, weak-kneed Democrats and the MSM CW patrol the capital city desperate to kill healthcare reform, the drama is not over yet. Jon Cohn has a must-read on the latest developments in a strategy to save something real. Try not to let your eyes glaze over at times – this is parliamentary politicking and policy-making at its most arcane. But it seems clearer and clearer to me that Obama is deadly serious about getting this done – more so than some of his advisers:

Even the decision to focus on jobs, banking, and the economy right now–while letting the "dust settle" on health care reform–may not be quite the sign of retreat it seems at first blush. Many insiders have suggested to me that giving leadership a little breathing space to negotiate, and giving members of Congress more time to adjust to the post-Massachusetts political landscape, will ultimately make a deal more likely. In today's Los Angeles Times, Rep. Gerald Connolly, president of the House Freshman Democrats says that strategy may be working: "The more they think about it, the more they can appreciate that it may be a viable . . . vehicle for getting healthcare reform done."