Possible deal in House on health reform

As reported by CNN -- follow this link for details

Update, 3:30 -- some "deal" -- the only news here is Blue Dog Dems getting House leaders to agree on holding off a vote on health reform until after the month-long August recess.

Cambridge police release Gates arrest recording

The Boston Herald posted the audio at its website today. Didn't add much to story, in this man's opinion, though Sgt. James Crowley sounded professional throughout and little of Professor Gates's alleged unhinged rant could be heard.

A theory making the rounds -- was the question about Gates at Obama's July 22 press conference planted with a sympathetic reporter (Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times) to divert attention from Senate Majority leader Harry Reid announcing the next day -- as Obama surely knew was coming -- that the Senate would not vote on health reform before the August recess?

What better way to rile up liberals than with a timely opportunity for self-righteous indignation about racial profiling?

Report: Obama calls Cambridge cop who arrested Gates

A sign that Obama knows he shouldn't have waded full bore into the controversy after first acknowledging he wasn't sure on specifics. Reporting today from The Hill --

... Obama said the five-minute conversation confirmed that (Sgt. James) Crowley is a good man and that the sergeant and the professor are "two decent people," though he still believes that Crowley and Gates both overreacted. The president further said that he contributed to the "ratcheting up" of the story.

Obama said it was "unfortunate" that his word choice "maligned" the police department and Crowley.

"And I could have calibrated my words differently." ...

Read the full story here.

Cop who arrested Gates teaches racial profiling class

More great coverage from the Boston Herald --

Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley, the cop at the center of a firestorm over the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., has taught a racial profiling class at the Lowell Police Academy for five years. ...

Granted, the police academy isn't Harvard and, hence, one is more likely to encounter a robust exchange of ideas there. On how every arrest of a person of color isn't the result of racial profiling, for example.

This story just keeps getting better.

Alleged racist cop who arrested Henry Louis Gates

A story in today's Boston Herald that surely has Professor Gates cringing in embarrassment --

The Cambridge cop prominent Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. claims is a racist gave a dying Reggie Lewis mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in a desperate bid to save the Celtic superstar’s life 16 years ago Monday.

“I wasn’t working on Reggie Lewis the basketball star. I wasn’t working on a black man. I was working on another human being,” Sgt. James Crowley, in an exclusive interview with the Herald, said of the forward’s fatal heart attack July 27, 1993, at age 27 during an off-season practice at Brandeis University, where Crowley was a campus police officer. ...

You know, as racist cops are wont to do.

Schultz sidekick Norman Goldman getting radio show

Radio host Ed Schultz announced on his show today -- or more accurately, announced at a town hall meeting he moderated in Madison, Wisc., on Sunday which was rebroadcast on Schultz's show today -- that his longtime "senior legal analyst" Norman Goldman (in photo at right) is getting his own radio show.

Details are still sparse but according to Goldman, who guest hosted the final hour of Schultz's radio show today (Schultz also hosts a TV show weeknights on MSNBC), told listeners that he'll be broadcasting from his adopted home of Los Angeles as of September.

Nuttiest theory yet for Palin stepping down: She may have "done something" to Michael Jackson, claims caller to Sharpton radio show

... And Rev. Al says of the theory, "that's interesting." Almost as much as extent that Sharpton is willing to consider delusional conspiracy theories. This one comes by way of Brian Maloney at The Radio Equalizer.

Weeks of rain and drizzle, followed by a glorious July 4th weekend. Fair enough.

This photo wasn't taken over the holiday weekend -- I took it at a 9/11 anniversary observance in Buzzards Bay a few years ago -- but it's one of my favorite photos of the flag and the weather at the time was much the way it was this morning, after the endless rain, drizzle and fog of spring and early summer.

Bill Clinton, ever the sensitive one

From an essay by Bill Clinton titled "Getting it Right" in Time magazine's "Annual Making of America Issue," with its theme of "What Barack Obama Can Learn From FDR" --

Roosevelt understood that in a complex and perilous situation, you have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, and he was masterful in doing a variety of difficult things simultaneously.