Gregg Levine

I am watching the Landmarks Preservation Commission hearing (on NY1 for locals). All of the commissioners seem to be coming down on the side of NOT preserving the building currently on the site. [Update: all commissioners have spoken, the vote is in, and the building has been removed from the commission's calendar, 9-0. That means [...]

*button courtesy of Emptywheel devotee Rosalind (photo: G Levine).

I’m afraid this will be a less intensive liveblog, as I was detained (by a very long line for coffee) and missed he first 15 minutes. My apologies to all, but I really needed the coffee! This afternoon’s panel: Deepwater Disaster: Response and Recovery on the Gulf Coast The catastrophic explosion that caused an oil [...]

No FDL alumns on this panel, but it is a topic that should be near and dear ro many readers’ hearts. Obama’s Social Security "Death Panel": Engaging Activists to Defeat the Drive to Cut Critical Social Programs This panel will detail the push by anti-government organizations and the president’s debt commission to solve the “deficit [...]

Have just landed in the convention center for this panel/training session: Covering Congress: The Art of Insider Citizen Reporting THURSDAY, JULY 22ND 10:30 AM – 11:45 AM TRAINING, MIRANDA 7 We all know about the infamous “Beltway Bubble” and the information divide between political professionals and the rest of us. That divide is not, however, [...]

Monday, around 11:20 PM EDT, an arrest was made in connection with Saturday’s attempted car bombing in New York City’s Times Square. Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old US citizen, was apprehended at JFK airport while attempting to board a flight to Dubai (CNN is reporting that Shahzad was already on board the plane and was removed [...]

An "amateurish" car bomb (to use MYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s word) was discovered early Saturday evening when a street vendor reported smoke emerging from a parked Nissan Pathfinder near the corner of 45th Street and Broadway in New York City’s Times Square. A collection of fireworks, propane tanks, and other explosives were later removed from [...]

If you thought “We never saw it coming” sounds like a bit of song and dance, well, as Jimmy Durante would say, You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Ahhh, the power of the Democrats! To all of you who said that Dems couldn’t get anything done, to all of you that said Congressional Democrats couldn’t find the President’s desk with a map, a flashlight, and guided tour from Desirée Rogers, to all of you that said this White House did not know how to play political hardball, I say: Behold!

Just look what has happened in the last fortnight (or so): the president actually put his health plan on paper, the Senate leadership and the White House decided that budget reconciliation wasn’t such a bad idea after all, Democrats in both houses of Congress came together on a sidecar strategy, leadership has started whipping votes like there’s no tomorrow, President Obama has taken his show on the road in campaign-style events to sell his reform plan, and he, the president himself, is having one-on-one meetings with Democratic members (yes, that’s Democratic, not Republican) of the House to arm twist and horse trade. And, the great grassroots organizing forces of the left—from OFA to SEIU, from DFA to HCAN, from MoveOn to what the serious folks call “the liberal blogosphere” (not the marginal blogs, of course [smile])—have been mobilized in an all-out, no-holds-barred, damn-near scorched earth effort to move every last member of the House off the dime and on board the health care highway.

Hell, the White House is giving away NASA bases, and the SEIU is threatening primary challenges to anyone that votes against the “Senate-plus” health care overhaul—even if that means running kamikaze, third-party candidates. All to counteract the horrible, obstructionist, downright evil efforts of notorious Public Enemy Number One. . .

Obama accepts the award as a “call to action.” I’m looking forward to that action.