We haven’t been hearing much from everyone’s favorite wacky Iowan coot, Senator Chuck Grassley, ever since the Senate Finance Committee passed its health care bill without any help or input whatsoever from the “chief Republican negotiator,” who was busy bottoming out. So today your sentimental editor went to the YouTube and searched “grassley” in the off-chance he’d been up to anything recently. First result, boom. [YouTube]

• THE WORST DECISION ANY MEMBER OF ANY SPECIES OF ANY GENUS HAS MADE SINCE THE CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION, OR EARLIER: Andy McCarthy is easily the nuttiest wingnut on National Review’s The Corner — the #1 Internet blog — and it was a delight to read his reaction to the announcement of KSM’s trial in New York City: “The decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other top al-Qaeda terrorists to New York City for a civilian trial is one of the most irresponsible ever made by a presidential administration.” He explains that this fits perfectly into Lord Voldemort’s latest scheme to return to full power. [National Review]

Tee hee, god knows what the Fox News programming must be like tonight, the night after a funeral for murdered soldiers, but apparently Bill O’Reilly has to go so far as to play “devil’s advocate” to suggest that “we can’t kill all the Muslims” — as in, that’s more or less what his guest’s argument would be. His guest is probably more accurate in a sense, however, since official U.S. anti-terrorism policy is still basically “run around the Middle East for 10-20 years and try to kill all the Muslims.” [YouTube]

Wacky Southern belle Virginia Foxx, the dingbat congresswoman from North Carolina whose other hits this year include calling the Matthew Shepard beating a “hoax” and for some reason using the word “tarbaby” on the House floor, has now delivered a nuclear bomb of hyperbolic meaninglessness: “I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that [health care] bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country.” Ever. [Media Matters]

Anyone who has ever been on an Amtrak train—especially during rush hour or the onset of holiday weekends—knows how much better things would be aboard that train if passengers were allowed to bring guns on it. Any and all conflicts would be basically pre-solved, because whoever wins is just whoever has a gun, see? Anyway, Congress is all for it, and they are willing to withhold $1.5 billion in funding from Amtrak—or shoot Amtrak with a gun concealed in its messenger bag—unless this is allowed by April. MORE »

9/11 sure did one foxtrot number on this country: “Four House Republicans are charging that the Council on American Islamic Relations is infiltrating Capitol Hill with undercover interns, and they’re basing the charge on a WND-published book that itself is based on the work of a man who posed as a Muslim to infiltrate CAIR as … an intern!” 2010 much? MORE »

• Obama, to prove he does not hate New Orleans and has zero plans to willfully destroy it—as per the tradition of his predecessor—will visit this afternoon. [Los Angeles Times]
• Over 30 people were killed in a series of coordinated terrorist goings-on in Islamabad. [New York Times]
• The Arctic’s ice will be completely gone in 20 years. Add “carbon emissions” to “rock salt” on the national What Melts Snow list. [Times Online]
• Obama wants to give $250 to every senior and disabled person this winter, since there will not be the traditional increase on Social Security benefit checks. [Washington Post]
• Probationary Kennedy Maria Shriver has apologized for talking on her cell phone while driving, for such is illegal in California. This is like literally the third time this has happened. [CNN]
• Uhh… the Germans are constructing a new Berlin Wall, out of Styrofoam… because they want to knock it down again. Ha ha.  It seems this is how most things start, in Germany. [WSJ]

Remember on the ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11 when the Coast Guard held some make-believe high-speed boat chase — they were chasing Osama bin Laden, on the actual Potomac River! — with guns shots and radio screams but didn’t bother to tell a single human being beforehand that it was a drill? Never will such miscues happen again! See, this time around, we know in advance that hundreds of emergency response officials are going to waste insane amounts of resources on a pretend 24esque high-speed Osama Chase tomorrow across all of Northern Virginia, so it’s okay! And if all goes as planned, homeland security teams will be prepared for the real Al Qaeda-coordinated triple-bomb/chemical weapon spill on Route 50 car chase scenario, scheduled for a Christmas release. MORE »

Hey did you guys know that Condi Rice is a dipshit still? It’s in the latest news information! “The last time we left Afghanistan, and we abandoned Pakistan … that territory became the very territory on which Al Qaeda trained and attacked us on September 11th. So our national security interests are very much tied up in not letting Afghanistan fail again and become a safe haven for terrorists … It’s that simple… if you want another terrorist attack in the U.S., abandon Afghanistan.” So… the Bush Administration wanted another terrorist attack in the U.S. between 2002 and 2008? This is the last time we ever trust that Karl Rove. [Crooks & Liars]

A choice bit of news today for terrorists and people who just seem like terrorists: Obama and his legal pals have decided that they will not be giving themselves any more pretend legal authority in order to detain suspicious people indefinitely. It turns out Bush and Cheney did a pretty comprehensive job of back in 2001 rounding up all the authority on Earth and renditioning the shit out of it in Gitmo and Bagram. MORE »

• Hollywood talkie star Patrick Swayze, who famously had cancer, has died from the aforementioned cancer at the age of 57. [New York Times]
• “Led by their most senior black lawmakers” (?), Democrats have decided to importantly vote on whether or not to sanction Joe Wilson and whether or not to make this an issue about race. [Washington Post]
• America has blown up a car in Somalia! But what counts is what’s inside the car, namely, Al Qaeda’s most talented terrorist. [WSJ]
• The American Medical Association never likes health care reform except just now it has announced that it likes Obama’s health care reform, perhaps because it stands to gain like $200 billion as cuts to Medicare are stopped. [LA Times]
• Today on Obama’s Everyone Should Be Taking Responsibility For Things tour: Midwestern auto-workers, whom he will tell to be responsible with their jobs and savings, should they ever have these things again. [AP]
• The Senate will NOT be giving Obama’s friends the ACORNS any federal housing money, and the US Census doesn’t want their stupid help either, in counting people. [Reuters]