Yet, will it really matter? It's up for debate, as this article in the NY Times discusses:

"There are two things that are important in politics," Mark Hanna, the great Republican kingmaker of the late 19th century, once said. "The first thing is money, and I can't remember what the second one is."

What was true in Hanna's century remained true in the next, and since the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, Congress has imposed stricter regulations on money in politics. Advocates of those rules argue that they rein in corruption and increase public trust in government.

But after more than three decades, has the system made a difference?

The article goes on to cite studies that have shown that money affects outcomes very little:

Legal scholars and social scientists say the evidence is meager, at best, that the post-Watergate campaign finance system has accomplished the broad goals its supporters asserted.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy noted in his opinion that no evidence was marshaled in 100,000 pages of legal briefs to show that unrestricted campaign money ever bought a lawmaker's vote. And even after Congress further tightened the rules with the landmark McCain-Feingold law in 2002, banning hundreds of millions of dollars in unlimited contributions to the political parties, public trust in government fell to new lows, according to polls.

But is "public trust in government" the proper litmus test, and have we ever really tested what is about to enter our political lives?

Defenders of the rules say their case for tighter restrictions on campaign money is obvious to anyone who knows Washington. Private influence-seekers shower big contributions on politicians because they want to gain access and shape policy; they would not spend the money if they got nothing in return.

Fred Wertheimer, the dean of campaign finance "reformers," pointed to the presidential campaign finance system as the best example of success. For five elections beginning in 1976, the presidential candidates of both major parties took public financing and did not receive private campaign contributions. "You can't prove a negative," Mr. Wertheimer said, "but in the Carter and Reagan presidencies there were no news stories about campaign contributions influencing presidential decisions."

And yet, the case can be made that additional restrictions - like they have in the United Kingdom, or less restrictions - like they have in Australia - haven't really made a difference:

Supporters of the restrictions point to Britain to show that governments can police corruption without imperiling free speech. Britain started regulating political spending as far back as 1883 and has tightened the rules steadily ever since.

Those British restrictions would violate the Supreme Court's view of the First Amendment, yet Britain's political debates are as robust as they are in the United States.

Opponents of restrictions, on the other hand, point out that Australia barely regulates political money. Individuals and corporations can give without limit. Parties can spend freely. And there is not much disclosure about who gives what to whom. But political corruption has not threatened a vibrant democracy there.

In any event, Congress is rushing to pass laws now that will lead to greater transparency, forcing U.S. corporations to either get shareholders to vote on actual political expenditures, and/or forcing them to declare these expenditures in some public fashion.

It's hard to believe, though, that a company like Exxon/Mobile, with $43 billion in profit last year won't use some of that money to try to influence the outcome of some important political race sometime in the future. For the first time in almost a century, it's now legal for them to spend corporate profits this way.

And that is simply stunning.

Organizations that are mobilizing to help Haitians struck down by this calamity include, Mercy Corp, American Red Cross, and Doctors Without Borders, to name only a few.

Speaking of which, Doctors Without Borders (also known by their French initials, MSF) are already on the ground and reporting back on the devastation here. The New York Times is reporting up-to-the-minute developments here.

The big news out of Iraq over the weekend was the awarding of a handful of new oil development contracts to companies such as Royal Dutch Shell and Russia's Lukoil. These bids follow earlier awards of fields for development to China. The American oil majors failed to conclude any new deals, though Exxon Mobil won a bid for West Qurna 1 in November. The Iraqi authorities have strong motivations to diversify their petroleum customer base given the current hegemonic position of the United States in their country.

And will all this extra oil coming online from Iraq reduce the price of gas?

China's petroleum consumption was up by 14% this November over the previous year, and daily imports have risen now to over 4 million bpd. Not so long ago, China was bringing in just 3 million bpd. In other words, even if Iraq could suddenly increase its production by a million barrels a day, it would simply be meeting the recent increase in Chinese demand. The extra petroleum Iraq might pump in the near to medium term won't keep oil prices low, it will simply help prevent them from skyrocketing.

This is the next phase of Iraqi history:

The petroleum wealth, insofar as it flows into government coffers, will also prove challenging to the survival of Iraqi democracy. Very few countries that generate more than 25% of their GDP from petroleum exports have managed to remain stable and democratic. It is simply the case that petroleum wealth will, over time, make the Iraqi government overwhelmingly powerful vis-a-vis its own citizens. Charges are already flying that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is using his control of petroleum resources to establish tribal militias loyal to his Dawa Party, and to bolster Dawa's performance in elections.

After spending more than $500 billion on the Iraq fiasco, with over 3,000 deaths and 25,000 injuries since 2003 when the war on Iraq began, are Americans even paying attention to any of this? It's truly amazing how quickly Iraq has fallen off the radar screen in this country.

Professor Cole follows this every day at his blog, Informed Comment. Don't miss it.

When I reached Jonathan Gruber on Thursday, he was working his way, page by laborious page, through the mammoth health care bill Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had unveiled just a few hours earlier. Gruber is a leading health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is consulted by politicians in both parties. He was one of almost two dozen top economists who sent President Obama a letter earlier this month insisting that reform won't succeed unless it "bends the curve" in the long-term growth of health care costs. And, on that front, Gruber likes what he sees in the Reid proposal. Actually he likes it a lot.

Gruber -- along with Mark McClellan, the former director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services under George W. Bush -- go on to detail the cost-cutting efficiencies of this bill (in addition to the areas that need improving):

In their November 17 letter to Obama, the group of economists led by Dr. Alan Garber of Stanford University, identified four pillars of fiscally-responsible health care reform. They maintained that the bill needed to include a tax on high-end "Cadillac" insurance plans; to pursue "aggressive" tests of payment reforms that will "provide incentives for physicians and hospitals to focus on quality" and provide "care that is better coordinated"; and establish an independent Medicare commission that can continuously develop and implement "new efforts to improve quality and contain costs." Finally, they said the Congressional Budget Office "must project the bill to be at least deficit neutral over the 10-year budget window and deficit reducing thereafter."

As OMB Director Peter Orszag noted in an interview, the Reid bill met all those tests. The CBO projected that the bill would reduce the federal deficit by $130 billion over its first decade and by as much as $650 billion in its second. (Conservatives, of course, consider those projections unrealistic, but CBO is the only umpire in the game, and Republicans have been happy to trumpet its analyses critical of the Democratic plans.)

Orzag remarks:

"Let's use the metric of that letter," said Orszag, who helped shape the health reform debate for years from his earlier posts at CBO and the Brookings Institution. "Deficit neutral; got that. Deficit-reducing second decade, got that. Excise tax: That was retained. Third is the Medicare commission: has that. Fourth is delivery system reforms, bundling payments, hospital acquired infections, readmission rates. It has that. If you go down the checklist of what they said was necessary for a fiscally responsible bill that will move us towards the health care system of the future, this passes the bar."

So, it would appear that there are real cost-cutting measures in this bill that would be a good first step in reforming our badly-broken system. And yet, it seems as if all Americans will be forced to buy crappy insurance policies from the greedy insurance industry for the foreseeable future. Without a proper Public Option to compete with the private insurance industry, can we truly achieve the cost-cutting needed to get this beast under control, where health care premiums are skyrocketing at annual rate of 20%?

Reasonable minds can disagree about Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other alleged Sept. 11 perpetrators in a Manhattan federal court. But some prominent criticisms are exaggerated, and others place undue faith in military commissions as an alternative to civilian trials.

Mohammed is many things: an enemy combatant in a war against the United States whom the government can detain without trial until the conflict ends; a war criminal subject to trial by military commission under the laws of war; and someone answerable in federal court for violations of the U.S. criminal code. Which system he is placed in for purposes of incapacitation and justice involves complex legal and political trade-offs.

It is those trade-offs that Holder has weighed:

In deciding to use federal court, the attorney general probably considered the record of the military commission system that was established in November 2001. This system secured three convictions in eight years. The only person who had a full commission trial, Osama bin Laden's driver, received five additional months in prison, resulting in a sentence that was shorter than he probably would have received from a federal judge. One reason commissions have not worked well is that changes in constitutional, international and military laws since they were last used, during World War II, have produced great uncertainty about the commissions' validity. This uncertainty has led to many legal challenges that will continue indefinitely -- hardly an ideal situation for the trial of the century.

They cite the fact that the Bush Administration used civilian courts to put away dozens of terrorists:

Many of Holder's critics appear to have forgotten that the Bush administration used civilian courts to put away dozens of terrorists, including "shoe bomber" Richard Reid; al-Qaeda agent Jose Padilla; "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh; the Lackawanna Six; and Zacarias Moussaoui, who was prosecuted for the same conspiracy for which Mohammed is likely to be charged. Many of these terrorists are locked in a supermax prison in Colorado, never to be seen again.

They conclude with these observations:

The Bush administration, criticized on similar grounds, properly explained that it would use whatever lawful tool worked best, all things considered, to incapacitate a particular terrorist. Holder's decisions appear to reflect a similarly pragmatic approach.

Of course, the attorney general made a different call on Mohammed than did the Bush administration. The wisdom of that difficult judgment will be determined by future events. But Holder's critics do not help their case by understating the criminal justice system's capacities, overstating the military system's virtues and bumpe--stickering a reasonable decision.

Congress gave final approval Thursday for an additional $24 billion to help the jobless and support the housing market as climbing unemployment poses a growing liability for elected officials.

The bill, passed overwhelmingly by the House and headed to President Obama for his signature Friday, extends unemployment insurance benefits that were due to expire and renews an $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers, while also expanding it to cover many other home purchases.

And Democrats only had to break three separate filibusters in the Senate to get this passed! The first filibuster was broken by a vote of 87-13, the second by a vote of 85-2, and the third by a vote of 97-1. The fourth and final vote, the one to actually pass the bill, was 98-0. Elapsed time: five weeks for a bill that everyone ended up voting for.

Why? Because even though Republicans were allowed to tack on a tax cut to the bill as the price of getting it passed, they decided to filibuster anyway unless they were also allowed to include an anti-ACORN amendment. Seriously. A bit of ACORN blustering to satisfy the Palin-Beck crowd is the reason they held up a bill designed to help people who are out of work in the deepest recession since World War II.

Egg-zactly! And that's what's going on with the Health Care Reform debate, in addition to the Climate Bill, where Barbara Boxer's committee reported to the full Senate their bill with ZERO input by the Republicans, who boycotted the hearings.

This is the deal: Americans vote, then the majority in the Senate and the House determine the legislative priorities. Democrats suffered through eight years as the minority party, and now it's time for Republicans to take their turn. You don't get to call the shots when your in the minority. It's that simple. You can take your ball and run away (or not show up for debate), sure, but you should be severely punished for it, too, next time the country votes.

That goes for each party, whoever is out of power.

On behalf of a coalition of U.S. and international musicians, including R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Tom Morello and Jackson Browne, the National Security Archive today filed a series of FOIA petitions requesting the full declassification of secret U.S. documentation on the strategy of using music as an interrogation device at Guantanamo and other detention centers.

Jackson Browne's music is that bad to some ears? This is a "futility technique?"

The Archive also posted several declassified documents and published reports that refer to the use of "loud" music to "create futility" in uncooperative detainees at Guantanamo. A 2004 Defense Department report on abuses at the military base in Cuba, for example, stated that the "futility technique included the playing of Metallica, Britney Spears and Rap music."

Maybe Britney Spears' life is a bit futile, but her music? Really? In actuality, it's no joking matter:

"At Guantanamo, the U.S. government turned a jukebox into an instrument of torture," said Thomas Blanton, the Archive's executive director. "The musicians and the public have the right to know how an expression of popular culture was transformed into an enhanced interrogation technique."

And R.E.M. is pissed, too:

"We have spent the past 30 years supporting causes related to peace and justice -- to now learn that some of our friends' music may have been used as part of the torture tactics without their consent or knowledge, is horrific," R.E.M. said in a statement. "It's anti-American, period."

Amen to that!

One band not mentioned, though, is The Beatles. It seems that their music has the opposite effect on similar ears. Even the Taliban seem to love their music:

The Beatles song "She Loves You," which popped into my head soon after I received my wife's letter from the Red Cross, was the most popular.

For reasons that baffled me, the guards relished singing it with me. I began by singing its first verse. My three Taliban guards, along with Tahir and Asad, then joined me in the chorus.

"She loves you -- yeah, yeah, yeah," we sang, with Kalashnikovs lying on the floor around us.

What a strange confluence - or Consilience - of music and terrorism these past few days. It's surreal, to say the least.

It's obvious that they were impressed by Obama's impact on the dialogue between nations and how he has brought about a radical shift in world politics, where dialogue and negotiation are back in vogue. Essentially, this prize is meant to both encourage Obama's vision and as a repudiation of the past 8 years under the Bush administration.

And yet, when he talks about upholding Nobel's will, he mentions the "reduction of troops around the world." And Obama has done that how, exactly?

Watch the entire interview to get a feel of what they were thinking.

In 1850, the elderly master of a South Carolina estate took pen in hand and painstakingly divided up his possessions. Among the spinning wheels, scythes, tablecloths and cattle that he bequeathed to his far-flung heirs was a 6-year-old slave girl valued soon afterward at $475.

In his will, she is described simply as the "negro girl Melvinia." After his death, she was torn away from the people and places she knew and shipped to Georgia. While she was still a teenager, a white man would father her first-born son under circumstances lost in the passage of time.

In the annals of American slavery, this painful story would be utterly unremarkable, save for one reason: This union, consummated some two years before the Civil War, represents the origins of a family line that would extend from rural Georgia, to Birmingham, Ala., to Chicago and, finally, to the White House.

This is the key to this story, which was undoubtedly repeated millions of times over. It's unlikely that the next black First Lady will receive such scrutiny, but for now, in 2009, it's a first:

Now the more complete map of Mrs. Obama's ancestors -- including the slave mother, white father and their biracial son, Dolphus T. Shields -- for the first time fully connects the first African-American first lady to the history of slavery, tracing their five-generation journey from bondage to a front-row seat to the presidency.

"She is representative of how we have evolved and who we are," said Edward Ball, a historian who discovered that he had black relatives, the descendants of his white slave-owning ancestors, when he researched his memoir, "Slaves in the Family."

"We are not separate tribes of Latinos and whites and blacks in America," Mr. Ball said. "We've all mingled, and we have done so for generations."

Ball emphasizes the most important aspect of this research: it's part of our American heritage from which we cannot run away. You should read the entire article. It's very moving.

On Sept. 1, 2009, Finton met with the undercover FBI officer and was told the vehicle for the attack would be carrying close to one ton of explosives. According to the affidavit, Finton indicated an awareness that the bomb would cause civilian casualties, but expressed his view that such casualties were justified. Unbeknownst to Finton, the FBI ensured that the vehicle for the attack contained no actual explosive materials.

The affidavit alleges that yesterday, on September 23, 2009, Finton drove a van containing what he understood to be explosive material and parked it directly in front of the northwest corner of the federal building. Finton got out of the van, locked the door and got into another vehicle driven by the undercover FBI officer and drove away. Within a few blocks of the federal building, Finton made a cell phone call to remotely detonate the purported bomb in the van. FBI agents arrested Finton immediately after he attempted to detonate the device.

It seems like our FBI has been working overtime, that's for sure:

The FBI developed an investigative plan to determine Smadi's true intent while also protecting the public's safety. Smadi made clear his intention to serve as a soldier for Usama Bin Laden and al Qaeda, and to conduct violent jihad. Undercover FBI agents, posing as members of an al Qaeda "sleeper" cell, were introduced to Smadi, who repeatedly indicated to them that he came to the U.S. for the specific purpose of committing "Jihad for the sake of God." Smadi clarified that he was interested in "self-jihad," because it was "the best type of jihad." Smadi was interested in violent jihad against those he deemed to be enemies of Islam. The investigation determined Smadi was not associated with other terrorist organizations.

In June 2009, Smadi identified potential targets in the Dallas area; but in mid-July, he notified an undercover FBI agent that he had changed his mind regarding the targets. On July 21, 2009, Smadi met with an undercover FBI agent and directed the agent to drive them to a Wells Fargo Bank in downtown Dallas. Smadi and the undercover FBI agent then drove to 1445 Ross Avenue where the Fountain Place office tower is located. A Wells Fargo Bank is located in that building. Smadi went into the building where he conducted his own reconnaissance.

In late August 2009, while meeting with one of the undercover FBI agents in Dallas, Smadi discussed the logistics and timing of the bombing, stating that he would have preferred to do the attack on "11 September," but decided to wait until after the month of Ramadan, which ended on September 20, 2009. At the conclusion of the meeting, Smadi decided that a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) would be placed at the foundation of the Fountain Place office tower. Unbeknownst to Smadi, the FBI ensured the VBIED contained only an inert/inactive explosive device which contained no explosive materials.

It sure makes you wonder what else is coming down the pike...

Visit the 9/11 Digital Archive today.

Poor Joe Wilson. The conservative Republican representative from South Carolina stepped in it Wednesday night when he broke with centuries of decorum by screaming, "You lie!" at President Obama during his health-care speech to a joint session of Congress.

Cut the man some slack. He's passionate! I know this because he told me, in the sole message that blazes across his campaign Web site: JOE WILSON IS PASSIONATE ABOUT STOPPING GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE

Except that he's not -- at least not when it comes to his, and his family's, government-run health care. As a retired Army National Guard colonel, Wilson gets a lot of benefits (one of which, apparently, was not a full appreciation of the customs, traditions, and courtesies that mandate respect for one's commander in chief). And with four sons in the armed services, the entire Wilson brood has enjoyed multiple generations of free military medical coverage, known as TRICARE!

Yes, it's true. As politicos and town-hall criers debate the finer points of the public option, employer mandates, coverage for undocumented immigrants, and who's more Hitler-like, they seem to miss a larger point: the United States has single-payer health care. It covers 9.5 million active-duty servicemen and women, military retirees, and their dependents -- including almost a 10th of all Californians and Floridians, and nearly a quarter of a million residents of Wilson's home state.

Military beneficiaries like Wilson -- who, as a retiree, is eligible for lifetime coverage -- never have to worry about an eye exam, a CT scan, a prolonged labor, or an open-heart surgery. They have access not only to the military's 133,500 uniformed health professionals, but cooperating private doctors as well -- whose fees are paid by the Department of Defense. It"s high-quality care, too: surveys from 2007 and 2008 list TRICARE among "the best health insurer(s) in the nation" by customer satisfaction. Yet Wilson insists government-run health care is a problem.

And how does Joe Wilson feel about TRICARE?

"As a 31-year Army Guard and Reserve veteran, I know the importance of TRICARE," he said in a press release. "The number of individuals who choose to enroll in TRICARE continues to rise because TRICARE is a low cost, comprehensive health plan that is portable and available in some form world-wide." He went on to call TRICARE "world class health care," concluding on a personal note. "I am grateful to have four sons now serving in the military, and I know that their families appreciate the availability of TRICARE," he said.

Adam Weinstein, the author of the column above, is an Iraq veteran who doesn't have health care. He finishes the column addressing Joe Wilson's support of TRICARE:

What does that mean? Nothing -- except that Joe Wilson was against government-run health care before he was for it. And now he's against it again. Just not when it comes to his own flesh and blood.

Can someone explain how this cognitive dissonance can exist? Please...? Anyone? ...Buehler?

On Saturday, Sept. 5, I woke up in Kunduz to begin the second day of reporting.

We did what we had not dared do at such a late hour on Friday. We drove south of Kunduz along the main Kabul highway until we reached the turnoff.

I checked with Sultan and the driver to see if they felt safe going there, and they said it seemed all right. We edged along a narrow country lane and came out on the riverbank with the tankers a few hundred yards ahead.

Continue on to find out what happened...

And we expect to clean up everything over there? What a mess.