Katie Connolly

Last night, Jon Stewart proved again that not only is he the funniest guy on TV, but he can also be TV's most compelling interviewer. His guest was Marc Thiessen, the former Bush speechwriter who seems to now make a living trying to scare the living daylights out of people about terrorism.

Our man in Florida, Arian Campos-Flores, recently noted with mock astonishment, that there's actually a Democrat in Florida's Senate race too. Who knew? The media has be so transfixed by the knock-down, drag-out battle between crispy, tanned Governor Crist and alleged back waxer Marco Rubio that Kendrick Meek, the only serious Dem in the race, has barely had a look-in.

I saw this fascinating graphic yesterday about the impact of farm subsidies on our eating habits:  It's an interesting graphic for so many reasons, not least of which is active government sponsorship of foods that aren't so good for us.

One number in this new Gallup poll on health-care reform caught my eye, because, oddly, it has good news for both sides of the debate. Gallup asked the 48% of people who oppose health care reform about why they're against the Democrats' plans.

The whole Eric Massa saga just keeps getting ickier. Earlier in the week, he claimed the harassment allegations against him stemmed from some "salty" language he used while at a wedding with some junior staffers. (It involved the word "frack," which I'm not convinced is salty but certainly isn't a word normal people use.) Then, Massa told a bizarre story about actually being the victim of harassment himself, when he got into a naked argument with Rahm Emanuel, whom he called "son of devil's...

Harvard's Institute of Politics released the latest results from its ongoing survey of young adults this morning, and they don't look good for Democrats. As in the rest of the population, President Obama remains personally popular (56 percent approval), but support for his individual initiatives, like health-care reform, is much weaker.

Jonathan Alter vented his frustration earlier today about the possibility that the Obama administration won't try accused 9/11 mastermind The question of how to bring accused terrorists to justice is an important issue to Graham.

Barack Obama and GOP Senator Lindsey Graham disagree on almost everything—except the need to work together.

White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers told Lynn Sweet from the Chicago Sun-Times this afternoon that she would be stepping down from her role. White House watchers pointed the finger of blame at Rogers during last year's media circus over the Salahis, a Virginian couple who crashed the State Dinner for India's prime minister.

As anticipated, today's health-care summit didn't end in a group hug. Consensus was not achieved. Republicans still want Obama to start over, which, of course, he won't.

GOP is focused on cheap domestic energy.

Julie Rovner from NPR is out today with a fascinating history of health care and the budget-reconciliation process in the Senate. She shows how every major health-care innovation of the last three decades has been done through reconciliation.

If there's a reason Americans are frustrated with Washington politics, it's this. On Monday just five Republican senators joined Democrats to vote for cloture on a $15 billion job-creation bill.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal yesterday, Gerald Seib made an observation about tomorrow's health-care summit that I think is critical to understanding the proceedings. "The first is that the most basic predicate for success in any negotiation—that both sides, at the outset, think reaching an agreement is preferable to failing to reach an agreement—doesn't exist here," he wrote.

When news broke today that Mitt Romney was officially endorsing John McCain in the Arizona Republican Senate primary, those of us who followed the two men during the 2008 presidential primaries couldn't help but smile ruefully.

Harry Reid's rather anemic jobs package passed an important hurdle tonight, with 62 senators voting to averting a potential filibuster and let the bill proceed to a floor vote.

The health-care-reform plan unveiled by the White House this morning sends one clear message to Republicans: this is happening with or without you. The administration has structured its plan as a series of fixes to the Senate health-care bill.

Ahead of Thursday's bipartisan White House health-care summit, the White House has unveiled the president's blueprint for the way forward. As expected, there are no sweeping changes (and by that I mean, there's no public option, even while some Senate liberals are attempting its revival.) The president basically offers a bunch of tweaks to the version that passed the Senate on Christmas Eve.

What Republicans would do if given carte blanche to run the country.

My new (sort of) colleague Ezra Klein wrote a great post yesterday explaining why the Republicans' big idea for health care reform—allowing insurers to sell their plans across state lines—is, in his words, "a terrible, no good, very bad health-care idea." Here's Klein: Insurance is currently regulated by states.

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) will announce this afternoon that he won't seek reelection for a third term in November. In a statement obtained by The New York Times, Bayh cites the atmosphere on Capitol Hill as dulling his appetite for politics. "After all these years, my passion for service to my fellow citizens is undiminished, but my desire to do so in Congress has waned," he will say at a press conference at 2 p.m.The move is a surprise to many Democrats, and virtually guarantees that Republicans...

A poll released by CBS/New York Times today shows that more Americans (31 percent) blame the Bush administration than the Obama administration (7 percent) for the country's economic woes.

A few days ago, California insurer Anthem Blue Cross announced that it would be hiking  its premiums on some customers. Some of these unfortunate folks would see their rates jump as much as 39 percent.

Senate Democrats today released their $85 billion jobs bill. Predictably, it's far less ambitious than its House counterpart, which focuses more on job-creating infrastructure projects.

Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha died this afternoon at a hospital in Virginia, following complications related to gall bladder surgery he underwent in January.

Jon Stewart has said on a couple of occasions that he can't tell if Obama is like a Jedi master, three moves ahead of the rest of us all the time, or if this health-care thing is kicking his ass.

A tieless Barack Obama ditched his presidential limo in favor of an SUV this morning and made a short trek up 16th Street in snow-covered D.C. (four minutes, according to the pool report) to fire up the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting.

Nancy Cook gives a great rundown on the reasons why today's jobless figure is good news, but not worthy of a celebration. But there's one more reason the administration is reacting cautiously, and it boils down to two words likely to strike fear in the heart of any government economist: jobless recovery.

If somebody were looking for evidence of the absurd dysfunctionality of the U.S. Senate, they'd need look no further than the nominations process. In a body that actually valued effective governance this would be a straightforward process, where the head of state nominates individuals to largely noncontroversial posts, and the Senate, after a reasonable period of examining the candidates, approves or rejects them.

The Supreme Court's controversial decision to lift restrictions on corporate spending on political campaigns rested in part on the notion that constitutional free-speech provisions should apply to corporations as well as to individuals.