Midday Open Thread

• Nate looks at Blue Dog districts to see how they align with the number of uninsured, and--here's a surprise--there are a lot of hurting Blue Dog constituents.

  A lot of the time, these guys are stuck in a tough spot between their party and their constituents. Here, those interests are mostly aligned. If a lot of the people on the top half of this list are voting against health care, first check the lobbying numbers, and then check to see if they're still in office four years hence.

• Ever wonder how funding healthcare reform is going to impact you and your state? Citizens for Tax Justice have analyzed three progressive proposal for raising revenue, and have the state-by-state results.
• Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III's decision to make Frank Ricci the wronged hero of the Sotomayor hearings is looking better and better for Sotomayor, and Democrats, every day.
• A federal judge has ordered that the 2004 CIA IG report, the one that the Justice Department has been delaying the release ofs, be released on August 24. The Justice Department basically wins, since they requested an August 31 date, and the ACLU wanted it immediately. Seems likely that the ongoing requests by DoJ to delay it might have something to do with the fact that it is reportedly so horrific that it pushed Eric Holder to consider torture prosecutions--perhaps the delay has been part of those deliberations.
• On the secrecy front, this is a troubling development:

  The White House has erased all mention of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board from its Web site. The removal, which was done wth no public notice, has underlined questions about the Obama administration’s commitment to the board, which was created on the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission to oversee the federal government’s actions on civil liberties and privacy.

• The FCC is crafting a national broadband plan to bring the nation's broadband up to par with the rest of the industrialized world's. And, of course, the phone and cable companies have responded by hiring more than 400 lobbyists in the past six months, spending some $20 million. Make your voice speak louder than their money.
• Whoa! Here's a way to pay for healthcare reform.
• Nancy Pelosi just wrapped up a liveblog at Crooks and Liars, talking about healthcare reform.
• The AP practices journamalism:

  House Dem staffers are furious this morning with the Associated Press, accusing the news outlet of grotesquely inflating the price tag of the new health care bill by relying on the calculations of an anonymous aide — while refusing to mention the much lower estimate provided by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

• Between the healthcare reform debate and the Sotomayor hearings, Tweety has absolutely lost it over abortion. Can someone just shut him up?
• Via Aguanomics, here's a nation-by-nation carbon footprint analyzer.