Harry Reid

Reverend Dr. Carlton W. Veazey, head of the national Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, is drawing attention to the fact that social-conservative lawmakers have levied into the health reform bill Congress is looking to pass this week a $250 million extension of the failed “abstinence-only” sex ed program that pays schools to not teach [...]

Last night lefty blogs lit up with the news that Colorado’s Sen. Mark Udall, after weeks of silence on the issue, threw in with Colorado Democratic colleague Sen. Michael Bennet in his drive to convince Majority Leader Harry Reid to reintroduce a pubic health insurance option into the Senate’s version of the health reform legislation [...]

A trio of groups that has been rallying support for the public option health insurance plan is puzzled over the fact the Colorado Democratic Senator Mark Udall has not come out as a supporter of the plan. Udall’s silence on the matter is particularly notable given that Colorado’s other Democratic U.S. Senator, Michael Bennet, has [...]

Greg Sargent has the scoop:
“Senator Harry Reid’s office says that if a final decision is made to pass health reform via reconciliation, the Majority Leader would support holding a reconciliation vote on the public option.”
The actual statement from Reid’s office, though, is odd.

U.S. Senate candidate Jane Norton railed against Sen. Michael Bennet this week for a letter he wrote in favor of passing health reform legislation that includes a public insurance option. She believes Coloradans don’t want a public option because she thinks they don’t want lawmakers to pass any health reform legislation at all. She says [...]

The Wall Street Journal Wednesday painted a bleak picture of Capitol Hill Democrats wandering about without a map on health reform in the wake of the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts, as if the blow of recognition that an anti-health reform Republican is taking Teddy Kennedy’s seat has dazed the caucus leaders out of all [...]

Colorado U.S. Rep. Jared Polis drafted a letter with fellow Democratic freshman Chellie Pingree, urging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to revisit the Senate version of the legislation in order to add a public option and then pass the bill through the process known as reconciliation, where it would only take 51 votes. A [...]

Colorado Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Polis’s bold move to pass health reform legislation that would include a public health insurance option has gained significant support in the week since he first began circulating among lawmakers and on the web a letter that he co-authored with Maine Democrat Chellie Pingree outlining the idea. Polis sent the letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today with the signatures of 120 Representatives attached.

A latest dispatch from the the land of political foolery comes from Mike Lillis today at the Washington Independent. It involves Pres. Obama in New Hampshire. It involves Las Vagas. It features demands for an apology. It has a Republican waging battle on the side of sin! Full dispatch reposted after the jump.

Moments before midnight on Friday, Marc Ambinder blogged at The Atlantic about some of the “juiciest revelations” in “Game Change,” a behind-the-scenes book on the 2008 presidential campaign by journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. According to the authors, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was bullish on Barack Obama’s chances at becoming the first African-American president because he was “light-skinned” and had “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”