One of Missouri's best governors ever, and America's only posthumously elected U.S. senator, was cruelly killed in a plane crash on the night of October 16, 2000.  Many of us still hold on to the powerful and meaningful slogan "I'm Still with Mel".  He was a shy, decent, principled, unpretentious man who did everything he could to make concrete improvements in Missourians' lives.  He boosted education statewide--which especially benefitted rural and poor districts.  He put his political capital on the line repeatedly to protect abortion rights and veto late term abortion bans and funding cuts to Planned Parenthood.  He led a successful fight against gun proliferation in 1999.  And because of his efforts (as we fight for SCHIP expansion), Missouri was the most improved state in the nation in the proportion of kids who had health insurance 1993-2001.  Political analysts considered him our best Senate recruit of the 2000 cycle, except that he didn't have to be recruited--he announced his candidacy for John Ashcroft's Senate seat the day after the 1998 elections.  It's unfortunate that he never got to serve.  My Dad is 59 and has lived most of his life in St. Louis.  In the wake of Mel's death, he told me he hadn't seen such a public outpouring over the death of a politician since Bobby Kennedy.

Please take a moment to remember Mel and his family.  Don't let the flame go out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Carnaha n

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ article?AID=/20070830/NEWS02/708300333/1 003/NEWS02

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/07041 7/health/health_health_outcomes_cda_u_s

What a bargain our health care system is!  We spend 245% as much as Canada on health care per person each year, and the result is...worse health care.  Explain to me again how this is the "best health care in the world"???  Harry Truman proposed universal health care for the US in 1948.  It's decades past time we had it.

Study in new medical journal compares health outcomes in Canada and U.S.
Tue Apr 17, 8:10 PM
By Anne-Marie Tobin

Amidst all the White House 2008 polls flying around, I wanted to do one purely for fun that tests the withdrawn or foregone Democratic candidacies (Evan Bayh, Russ Feingold, John Kerry, Tom Vilsack, and Mark Warner--so far--I'm omitting Gore since that still appears to be controversial).  You can register your vote here.

Gallup asked people whether they would vote for a presidential candidate their party nominated who was generally well-qualified to be president but had various characteristics.  Here they are with the percentage of respondents saying yes to each (I've also added the relevant politicians in each category):

Black: 94% (Barack Obama) (1)
Woman: 88% (Hillary Clinton) (2)
Mormon: 72% (Mitt Romney)
Married 3 times: 67% (Rudy Giuliani)
72+ years old: 57% (John McCain)

1 Gallup head Frank Newport argues that there's really no discrepancy anymore in how black candidates fare in pre-election polls vs. at the ballot box.

2 Gallup speculates that this figure may be artificially low because Republicans instinctively think of Hillary even though she's not in the question.

Note that these results would seem to favor Democrats in 2008.  :D

The vote was 56-34 (60 needed to invoke cloture, 10 not voting).  All Democrats voted yes (Johnson not voting).  Seven Republicans voted yes:

Norm Coleman (MN)
Susan Collins (MA)
Chuck Hagel (NE)
Olympia Snowe (ME)
Gordon Smith (OR)
Arlen Specter (PA)
John Warner (VA)

The vote on the resolution was 246-182 (57%-42%).  That's significantly narrower than the margin by which the American people oppose this escalation (60-70% oppose it).  Two Democrats, Gene Taylor (MS-4) and Jim Marshall (GA-8) again, voted no.  Seventeen Republicans--fewer than had been speculated and certainly than I'd hoped--voted yes.  Two Democrats and four Republicans didn't vote.

The 17 Republicans who voted yes were:
Mike Castle (DE-AL)
Howard Coble (NC-6)
Tom Davis (VA-11)
John Duncan (TN-2)
Phil English (PA-3)
Wayne Gilchrest (MD-1)
Bob Inglis (SC-4)
Timothy Johnson (IL-15)
Walter Jones (NC-3)
Ric Keller (FL-8)
Mark Kirk (IL-10)
Steve LaTourette (OH-14)
Ron Paul (TX-14)
Tom Petri (WI-6)
Jim Ramstad (MN-3)
Fred Upton (MI-6)
Jim Walsh (NY-25)

Someone raised this issue here earlier, but it does seem to me under the circumstances that the Senate's version of a minimum wage increase could be doomed because it includes changes to tax law, and the Constitution requires all revenue-raising bills to originate in the House.  I would think this could easily be overcome with a fairly common parliamentary tactic the Senate uses to get around that, but it doesn't seem to be the case here.  

What the Senate often does to originate its own tax or tax-related bills is take up a bill the House already passed that is still pending in the Senate, vitiate it (erase all its contents), and replace them with those of another bill on taxes the Senate just passed.  I can see a couple possible catches here though: it's so early in the 110th Congress that I don't know if the House has passed (and thus sent to the Senate) any bills other than the Democrats' initial 6 priorities.  And of those bills, only one addresses taxes: the one repealing cuts for oil and gas companies.  The Senate could vitiate that bill and insert its compromise minimum wage bill, then pass it and send it to the House, which should meet Constitutional muster.  But then the Senate couldn't pass the same bill or a similar one on oil company tax breaks--because that also has to originate in the House.  And while the minimum wage is a higher priority than repealing the oil tax breaks, why sacrifice one of your Six for '06 priorities for another?  And why would the all-powerful Demoratic House majority help the more mixed Senate by giving them another tax bill to vitiate and send back as a compromise minimum wage increase with tax cuts they (rightly) oppose?

The House can certainly rely on the Constitution at this point to justify not acting on the Senate bill.  And it can stand firm and refuse to pass a compromise minimum wage bill, playing a sort of kabuki with the Senate.  I think it would come down to who the public and the media blame for the stalemate: House Democrats for being stubborn, or Senate Republicans for adding poison pill amendments--some unconstitutional.  Polling shows 90% support for the clean minimum wage increase, but I haven't seen any polls on whether the public would support or oppose the Senate bill, or given the choice, prefer it or the House version (my instinct leans toward the latter).  I suspect the determinative round of this battle will play out in PR and organizing.