Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) joined former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) tonight in his criticism of Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) universal health care plan. Both senators attacked Obama for not including mandates in his proposal:

Clinton: “I think the whole idea of universal health care is such a core Democratic principle… I’m not going to start leaving 15 million Americans out of healthcare.”

Clinton also accused Obama of flip-floping on health care, arguing that he had supported a single-payer program as a candidate for the Senate and that his current proposal is not truly universal.

Clinton: “I’m not running for president to put band aids on our problems! I want every single American to have health care.

Obama disputed Clinton’s characterization: “I never said we should go ahead and try to get single payer. What I said was if we started from scratch…I would probably go with a single payer system. What has evolved is your presentation of my positions…”

UPDATE: According to the New Yorker, Clinton’s characterization is inaccurate.

If you’re starting from scratch,’ he [Obama] says, ‘then a single-payer system’-a government-managed system like Canada’s, which disconnects health insurance from employment-’would probably make sense. But we’ve got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition, as well as adjusting the culture to a different system, would be difficult to pull off. So we may need a system that’s not so disruptive that people feel like suddenly what they’ve known for most of their lives is thrown by the wayside.

UPDATE II: Obama at YearlyKos from a video posted on Clinton’s own YouTube channel: “If I were designing the system from scratch, I would go with a single payer system.”

During tonight’s Democratic debate in South Carolina, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) repeatedly attacked Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL): “ Senator Obama, it’s hard to have a straight up debate with you because you never take responsibility for any vote.” The audience booed. “On issue after issue, you voted present … Whenever someone raises that, there’s always some sort of explanation,” Clinton added.

Obama accused both Hillary and Bill Clinton of cherry-picking and misrepresenting his record. Edwards joined in the fray, asking Obama why he voted present “over 100 times” in the Illinois state legislature.

During tonight’s CNN/Congressional Black Caucus Institute debate, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) drew sharp distinctions between himself and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY). In a heated exchange, Obama accused Clinton of misrepresenting his comments about former president Ronald Reagan. At one point, Obama raised his voice, interrupted Clinton, and with his hand extended towards Clinton, told the senator from New York that he had lived with the consequences of the Reagan economy while she was serving on the corporate board of Walmart.

Was this Obama’s Rick Lazio moment?

UPDATE: Clinton echoes Krugman and misrepresents Obama’s Reagan comments, accuses Obama of working for a “slum lord.”

UPDATE II: TPM posted video of Clinton/Obama tension:

While Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, “cautioned that ‘recent security gains are fragile and still reversible,’” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I- CT) declared that “the surge worked.”

As predicted, McCain and Lieberman celebrated too soon. According to the U.S. military, “the number of roadside bombs deployed by Iraqi militants spiked during the first two weeks of January, reaching their highest level since the fall.” On Saturday, the AP reported that “street battles between members of a messianic cult and Iraqi troops raged for a second day as the death toll from the fighting in two predominantly Shiite southern cities rose from 50 to at least 68.”

A series of recent high-profile attacks is eroding the security gains of the previous six months, when violence dropped across much of the country. The main insurgent group, al-Qaida in Iraq, has carried out many of the attacks against fellow Sunnis who have turned against it. But insurgents also struck with deadly suicide blasts this week against Shiites observing Ashoura.

UPDATE: The AP is reporting that “a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a funeral tent in a predominantly Sunni village, killing at least 14 and wounding 17, in the third such bombing in Sunni areas in as many days.” The attack “raised concerns about the infiltration of Sunni groups that have joined forces with the Americans against al-Qaida in Iraq.”

Newsweek is reporting that Rudy Giuliani, who until recently was “well ahead of the pack in Florida,” is taking advantage of Florida’s flex voting laws (Florida voters don’t have to wait until primary day to cast their ballots) and “hoping he can convince voters to get to the polls before they have time to test drive other candidates.”

At a rally in New Smyrna Beach, Giuliani asked to see hands of audience members who had already voted. When only a few went up, Giuliani said, “I’ll tell you what–before they even get here to campaign, how about you go out and vote for me?”

The audience laughed. What they didn’t seem to recognize was that Giuliani was only half joking: No, really, he adds, “If I were living here, I’d just go out and vote now.”

Later that evening, he told another audience, “You should go vote for me tomorrow.”

In today’s New York Times, reporters David Kirkpatrick and Michael Powell erroneously characterize Mike Huckabee–who believes that his candidacy is divinely inspired– as a moderately religious politician who walks a fine line between “pulpit and podium.”

For the most part, Kirkpatrick and Powell ignore Huckabee’s numerous attempts to blend personal religious conviction with public policy and quote evangelical sources who marvel at Huckabee’s ability to downplay the role of religion in his conception of government.

Some evangelical observers say they marvel at Mr. Huckabee’s knack for making even the most conservative tenets of orthodox Southern Baptist faith, about creation, the accuracy of the Bible or gender roles, sound downright moderate when he is speaking in television interviews or at public debates.

Kirkpatrick and Powell also fail to correct the record about Huckabee’s disingenuous explanation for why he signed his name to a 1998 Southern Baptist Convention statement which suggested that a wife is subordinate to her husband. Huckabee has argued that “‘the position required no subordination at all.’ It meant, he said, both husbands and wives ‘mutually showing their affection and submission as unto the Lord.’”

But according to Richard Land, president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, “the statement says that while the husband and wife are equal before God, ‘the wife does not get veto power over the husband’s decision.’

“Somebody has to be in charge,” Land explained. “The Bible says the husband is in charge.” While the husband should “solicit his wife’s views,” ultimately “he is going to make the decision.” The reason, Land said, is that Southern Baptists believe that “God holds the husband accountable for the household.”

In their article, Kirkpatrick and Powell reprint Huckabee’s dodge and quote an evangelical leader who called Huckabee’s explanation “masterful.”

The two reporters also assert, rather ironically, that Huckabee “has indeed made an art of escaping politically delicate questions about theology.” In reality, by downplaying Huckabee’s strong religious convictions and his views about the role of religion in public life, Kirkpatrick and Powell misrepresent Huckabee as a more moderate politician. The former governor has often crossed the line between “pulpit and podium.”

Consider the following:

- In an interview with Beliefnet.com, Huckabee “clarified his view that the Constitution should be amended to be brought in line with God’s will — and he directly equated homosexuality with bestiality.”

- Huckabee has close connections to Christian Reconstructionists.

- In in Des Moines, Huckabee told bloggers who supported his candidacy that they were “doing the Lord’s work.”

- “At a Republican Governors Association Dinner speech in 2004, Huckabee had a mock three-minute telephone conversation with God. During that time, Huckabee said that “we kind of think you’d hang in there with us, Lord, we really do.”

- “In 1997, Huckabee claimed that Jesus would have agreed with him on supporting the death penalty.”

In his Nevada victory statement former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney omitted Iraq from the list of issues Americans are concerned about.

Today, the people of Nevada voted for change in Washington. For far too long, our leaders have promised to take the action necessary to build a stronger America, and still the people of Nevada and all across this country are waiting. Whether it is reforming health care, making America energy independent or securing the border, the American people have been promised much and are now ready for change.

And while Nevada Republicans considered “the economy and illegal immigration…[the] top problems facing the country,” Iraq and terrorism ranked in the top four. According to an October article in the Las Vegas Review Journal, “the Middle East conflict weighs heavily on the minds of Nevadans” and most linked the war in Iraq, which “has cost nearly 4,000 American lives, about $2 million a week” a strain on the economy.

Nationally, voters consider the war in Iraq a top priority. According to a CBS News/New York Times Poll from January 9-12, Iraq ranked second in importance behind jobs and the state of the economy. Voters also “continue to trust Democrats more than Republicans on most key issues, according to the latest data from a Rasmussen Reports tracking poll.”

Democrats get the nod on nine of ten issues we asked about…When the War in Iraq is isolated as a separate foreign-policy issue, Democrats enjoy an eight-point advantage of 47% to 39%, the same margin they held in November.

Thus, the above is just another indication that Romney is out of touch with American voters and their priorities.

Today, when President Bush proposed a $145 billion economic aid package, he “called again for Congress to make permanent the tax cuts that were enacted several years ago and are to expire in the next three years.”

Passing a new growth package is our most pressing economic priority. When that is done, Congress must turn to the most important economic priority for our country, and that’s making sure the tax relief that is now in place is not taken away…So it’s critical that Congress make this tax relief permanent.

Bush’s cynical attempt to seize the current economic downturn and press Congress to make his tax cuts permanent was recently rebuffed by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. As Kevin Drum pointed out, extending Bush’s tax cuts wold have “no effect on the economy right now, but it would likely make future economic problems even more intractable.”

Bernanke is saying, as clearly as he can, that a temporary economic downturn shouldn’t be used as a cynical excuse to pass new long-term tax cuts or to make existing tax cuts permanent. Not only would that have no effect on the economy right now, but it would likely make future economic problems even more intractable. In other words, Bernanke isn’t nuts: he thinks tax cuts reduce revenue and make long-term deficits worse.

According to the Washington Post, “Bernanke explicitly and repeatedly urged Congress not to conflate policy changes that might make sense in the long run with those that would provide immediate help for the economy.”

Yesterday, during a discussion about the Congressional Black Caucus on MSNBC’s Tucker, radio talk show host Bill Press called long time political pundit and MSNBC contributor Pat Buchanan a “white supremacist.”
Buchanan’s long history of racism has been well documented by the media watchdog group FAIR. Here is a sampling:

- In his 1988 autobiography, “Right from the Beginning,” on race relations in the late 1940s and early 1950s: “There were no politics to polarize us then, to magnify every slight. The ‘negroes’ of Washington had their public schools, restaurants, bars, movie houses, playgrounds and churches; and we had ours.”

- In a 1990 column that attempted to justify apartheid in South Africa, he denounced the notion that “white rule of a black majority is inherently wrong. Where did we get that idea? The Founding Fathers did not believe this.”

- A 1989 column referred admiringly to the apartheid regime as the “Boer Republic”: “Why are Americans collaborating in a UN conspiracy to ruin her with sanctions?“

In an interview with Beliefnet.com, former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee “clarified his view that the Constitution should be amended to be brought in line with God’s will — and he directly equated homosexuality with bestiality.”

QUESTIONER: Is it your goal to bring the Constitution into strict conformity with the Bible? Some people would consider that a kind of dangerous undertaking, particularly given the variety of biblical interpretations.

HUCKABEE: Well, I don’t think that’s a radical view to say we’re going to affirm marriage. I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal. Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again. I think the radical position is to make a change in what’s been historic.

At first glance, Huckabee’s argument sounds homophobic, on closer examination it betrays the former governor’s willingness to place his private religious creed above rational decision making– the very basis of a secular democracy– and a personal inability (or unwillingness) to make logical and rational distinctions within law.

As Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick points out, polygamy, pedophilia, and bestiality “are illegal because, [unlike gay marriage], they cause irreversible harms.”

…there are sound policy and health reasons to ban sex with animals…one can plausibly argue that there is a rational basis for states to ban polygamous and polyamorous marriages in which there has been historical evidence of an imbalance of power, coercion (particularly of young girls), and an enormous financial burden placed on the state. None of these arguments can be made against gay marriage.

Similarly, Andrew Sullivan highlights the importance of distinguishing between rational decision making and Huckabee-style hysteria.

The precise challenge for morally serious people is to make rational distinctions between what is arbitrary and what is essential in important social institutions…If you want to argue that a lifetime of loving, faithful commitment between two women is equivalent to incest or child abuse, then please argue it. It would make for fascinating reading. But spare us this bizarre point that no new line can be drawn in access to marriage–or else everything is up for grabs and, before we know where we are, men will be marrying their dogs. It is intellectually laughable.

Huckabee’s demeaning and intellectually dishonest answer trivializes, patronizes and demeans homosexual relationships and reveals that the governor is more than willing to insert his personal religious interpretation into government. More alarming still, is his inability to make the obvious distinctions between gay marriage (a union between two consenting adult men or two consenting adult women) and a union between “a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal.”

Because Huckabee is unable to make the kinds of rational distinctions necessary to govern America, he is unfit for office.