A sardonic congratulations must go out to Congressional Democrats who, after some years in minority exile, have made up for lost time by bringing home $800B worth of bacon.

The massive spending bill, equivalent to around 25% of the total annual federal budget, was passed with no Republican votes in the House and only 3 in the Senate.  It is, in other words, nearly 1100 pages of Democratic wish list items, poison to the American electorate.| MORE ›

Andrew Sullivan says that conservatives are being intellectually dishonest by opposing the Democrats’ $800B spending plan because of the deficits the nation ran under the Bush administration.

There’s a grain of truth in what Andrew says – both Reagan and Bush 43 were big spenders whose policies have contributed substantially to the problems our children will face in a few decades.| MORE ›

The withdrawal of his nomination to be Secretary of Commerce by Senator Judd has gotten a lot of comment focused on the stimulus package.  The Democrats want to have bi-partisan credit for the package, because it would give them cover if it does not succeed, and build more support for their policies if the stimulus succeeds.| MORE ›

Even readers of MSNBC know that much.

Bobby Jindal, Republican governor of Louisiana, is one of the most talented politicians in the U.S. Many believe he could very well be the next Republican nominee for president. Others think that 2012 comes too early for this intellectual conservative and think he’ll wait until 2015 / ’16 before running for the highest office.

Although he said on several occasions that he’s not interested in becoming America’s president, Jindal is playing an increasingly prominent role in his party.| MORE ›

This is what I call bipartisanship in action:

Republicans have caught the Democrats in a midnight “stimulus” power play that seeks to cut Republican conferees out of the House-Senate negotiations to resolve a final version of the Obama “stimulus” package. Staff members from the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) met last night to put together the “stimulus” conference report.| MORE ›

Despite public humiliation, CEOs of America’s biggest banks are trying to convince Congress they haven’t spent federal bailout money on themselves. Reuters reports:

The chief executives at Goldman Sachs (GS.N), JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N) Citigroup (C.N), Bank of America (BAC.N), Bank of New York Mellon (BK.N), State Street (STT.N), Morgan Stanley (MS.N), and Wells Fargo (WFC.N) are slated to testify Wednesday before the House Financial Services Committee.| MORE ›

The Taliban continue to attack Afghanistan government forces. At least five men armed with assault rifles and grenades attacked the Justice Ministry in the center of Kabul, a ministry employee told the Associated Press earlier today. Several people were killed.

U.S. officials, Afghan officials and Pakistani officials thought about talking to the Taliban in order to convince the extremist group to respect the authority of the central government.| MORE ›