Enough With This ‘100 Days’ Nonsense
By Stanley Kutler —
On what basis have the cable channels decided that President Obama’s first hundred days are the most important thing to happen in the history of the world? As in the case of FDR before him, much has happened in the beginning of the president’s first term—and there is much more to come.
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Specter Joins Democrats; Senate Count May Reach 60
By CARL HULSE and ADAM NAGOURNEY
The decision by Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania to switch parties potentially presents Democrats with a 60th vote and the power to break Senate filibusters.


The Specter of a shrinking GOP
Arlen Specter's defection likely means a filibuster-proof Democratic Senate majority. Choose your metaphor -- rats, ships, small tents -- but will the last Republican to leave please turn out the light?
By Mike Madden

Specter's "Happy 100 days!" gift to Obama
The Pennsylvania senator ditches the GOP. Is one of our major political parties on its death bed?
By Joan Walsh

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Frank Rich: The Banality of Bush White House Evil
President Obama can talk all he wants about not looking back, but this grotesque past is bigger than even he is. It won’t vanish into a memory hole any more than Andersonville, World War II internment camps or My Lai.

What’s Wrong with Washington?

by James Wolcott

Washington has always been out of sync with the rest of America, but since Obama’s election, Beltway pundits seem more stubbornly and stupendously irrelevant than ever. Have three decades of being wired for Republican power blown their jittery, Twittering minds?

Reagan and Nixon Greeted Despots, Too

By Joe Conason —
Few aspects of American politics are as ridiculous and dangerous as the right-wing urge to substitute macho posturing for foreign policy.

100 Down, 900 More to Go
by Katrina vanden Heuvel:

After 100 days, some important and worthy markers have been laid down by President Obama. But the big battles lie ahead in the next 900.

Lessons from the GOP in Retrograde by Terence Samuel The modern-day Republican Party is not so much a political party as it is a cautionary tale.

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Balzheimers Disease
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The Shaming of America

Judge Jay S. Bybee provided the legal framework for torture to the Bush administration. If he had even a particle of decency, he'd resign.
By Gene Lyons

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Editorial: Openness
There needs to be a detainee abuse investigation with subpoena power.

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We Don't Torture
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Torturers Should Be Punished By Amy Goodman —
The door to bringing torturers to justice is open only a crack. Whether it is kicked open or slammed shut is not up to the president. Though he may occupy the most powerful office on Earth, there is a force more powerful: committed people demanding change.

Progressivism Goes Mainstream
by John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira

New research on ideology refutes the conservative myth that America is a "center right" nation.
Barack Obama's agenda reflects deep and growing consensus among the American public about the priorities and values that should guide our government and society.

WATCH: Boehner Cites Cow Farts To Downplay Global Warming

RAHM TAKES ON CRITICS OF TORTURE MEMOS RELEASE
by Sam Stein

Rahm Emanuel had a message to critics of the administration's decision to release torture memos: the information is already out there, read the New York Review of Books.

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Tea Party Tyranny
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The Class Clowns

Once the masters of evil politics, Republicans have been reduced to half-assed buffoonery, providing comic relief for desperate times
by MATT TAIBBI

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Taibbi: Teabagging the Class Clowns

Armey’s Tea Party Army
By Joe Conason —
At the apex of the tea party movement is FreedomWorks, headed by former Rep. Dick Armey. His past career should be instructive to any starry-eyed citizens who believe that they have at last found the true right-wing revolutionary path.

World's Stupidest Argument
Posted by Joe Klein

Bush flunkies trying to argue that Obama is more polarizing than Bush was. Given the fact that Obama had to take dramatic action, at home and abroad, to start lifting the country from the mess Bush made almost everywhere--and also begin to turn the country away from the myopia and greed of the Reagan era--it's amazing that he hasn't raised more dust or teabags. And, I should add the fact that the alleged polarization mostly results from the fact that Obama gets extremely low ratings from self-identified Republicans, who constitute an extremist shard of a party at this point, is a badge of honor. (Commenter sgwhiteinfla points out that the polarization is also the result of overwhelming--88%--support from Democrats.)

In the long run, it's a safe historical bet that Bush will prove more polarizing than Obama because he was such an abject failure in the job--I doubt we'll ever see Obama submerge to approval ratings in the mid-20s, or launch wars peremptorily without cause or purpose. The constant sniping from Rove, Wehner and the others during Obama's first 100 days is a deeply neurotic reaction to the enormity of their own cockups in office. It shows a profound lack of class or grace, but then, that's no surprise with these guys, is it? They ran the country like thugs, and thugs they remain.