A big X2 on the skepticism. The Daily Mail article is based on a single unnamed Saudi source. That’s it. It’s very much in the Saudis’ self-interest to portray themselves as vigilant partners in the GWOT. DHS and the White House deny the Saudi source’s claims. I don’t trust anyone here — the source, the newspaper, or the US government.

The lack of skepticism in the title and text of this blog post, and most of the comments I scanned, is unwise barring some kind of corroboration.

FYI, the study of medical bankruptcies highlighted in the article you link to was co-authored by now-Senator Elizabeth Warren, along with longtime single-payer advocates Himmelstein and Woolhandler.

It could have been the capstone on one of the most successful and substantive careers in modern American politics.

Consequential, yes; substantive, no.

I would like to know if Eric Holder was approached and declined to speak on camera for the Frontline piece. Breuer is abominable, but Holder (and ultimately Obama) was his boss and thought Breuer was doing a heckuva job.

Maybe someone with Photoshop chops could find a shot of Bush congratulating Brownie post-Katrina and swap in Holder and Breuer’s faces. “Heckuva job, Lanny!”

Also nice project for someone with time would be a scorecard infographic (unless it already exists):

eyebrow: Obama/Holder’s DOJ
hed: Prosecutorial
LH col subhed: Zeal
RH col subhed: Negligence

No shortage of righteous whistleblowers, Aaron Swartz, etc., etc. for the Zeal column, no shortage of banksters, torturers, etc., etc., for Negligence.

Teddy, bravo, and I agree we have a brief window to harness public opinion to ramp up gun control advocacy to the Australian level. Buy ‘em back, and melt ‘em down to build playgrounds.

You wrote a key tag line right here: Illegal to own, not just to buy.

We need concerted, complementary communication strategies to create a juggernaut of advocacy for a full-bore (ahem), macho, take-no-prisoners (i.e., confiscatory) approach to gun control. I dropped a couple of ideas in this regard, in this comment to a Spocko post, including the following:

How about a little macho jiu jitsu to push for a real, 100-proof, hair-on-your-chest assault weapons ban with zero tolerance for “grandfathered” weapons? That’s what they got in Australia, mate! Are we going to let Australia out-macho us on the gun-control front? Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me, but who do you want writing your assault weapon legislation: Diane Feinstein or Crocodile Dundee?

In the process, we need to marginalize two broad groups of people who stand in our way: gun fetishists and wimpy politicians like Feinstein offering ineffective measures like “bans” that don’t actually ban. They’re all part of the problem. I say “marginalize,” by the way, not “shame” — I couldn’t a shit whether they’re capable of shame or any other emotion, or what their thought processes may be. The only emotions and thoughts I care about are those of the great majority of Americans who, I’m convinced, completely agree with the thrust of this diary. They need to know they’re not alone, and they need to feel their political oats.

Aaron Swartz and millions of others did it on SOPA, and SOPA — bad as it was — didn’t directly abet the killing of children. That gives us a big leg up already versus the gun fetishists and their cowardly abettors.

Bill Black’s piece on Jacob Lew is essential reading. I have to say that while substantial swaths of the progressosphere are reveling with self-satisfied amazement at their power to influence who says a prayer at the inauguration, we can’t do shit about Obama appointing another Wall Street hack as Treasury Sec’y…or to get mainstream media to pay attention to the dangerous stupidity of this appointment, rather than doing puff pieces on Lew’s loopy signature.