rollcall.com — Under the slogan “second opinion,” Republicans plan to communicate their message on multiple fronts, including on the Senate floor, in press conferences, via the Internet and through television and radio appearances. A Republican Senate aide described the effort as intended “to draw attention to the consequences of the health care law that the White House hopes people miss.” Democrats rebuked the strategy as typical of what the Republicans offered throughout the contentious health care debate. “I guess it takes Republicans a ‘second opinion’ to ignore all the benefits of the new law,” a Democratic Senate aide said. “Their second opinion pretty much sounds like their first opinion — just the same old rehashed obstructionism at its worst.”

thinkprogress.org — In an interview with American Family Association (AFA) radio yesterday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) argued against repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT), arguing that basically, members of the U.S. military are too bigoted to be willing to fight and die for the “guy in the next foxhole” if that guy happens to be gay

salon.com — A primary reason Bush and Cheney succeeded in their radical erosion of core liberties is because they focused their assault on non-citizens with foreign-sounding names, casting the appearance that none of what they were doing would ever affect the average American. There were several exceptions to that tactic -- the due-process-free imprisonment of Americans Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla, the abuse of the "material witness" statute to detain American Muslims, the eavesdropping on Americans' communications without warrants -- but the vast bulk of the abuses were aimed at non-citizens. That is now clearly changing.