Obamacare plan finally released; Update: Goodbye, 4th Amendment  —  And it's so large that Patients United Now had to split it into nine different parts, and to put out a bleg for an Army of Patients to scour the bill.  The title:Quality Affordable Health Care for All Americans.

How Pharma and Insurance Intend to Kill the Public Option, And What Obama and the Rest of Us Must Do  —  I'ved poked around Washington today, talking with friends on the Hill who confirm the worst: Big Pharma and Big Insurance are gaining ground in their campaign to kill the public option in the emerging health care bill.

Semi-Submarines, Stealthily Plying Pacific, Arrive as a Way to Smuggle Cocaine  —  MEXICO CITY — When anti-narcotics agents first heard that drug cartels were building an armada of submarines to transport cocaine, they thought it was a joke.  —  Now U.S. law enforcement officials …

U.S. Lawyers Agreed on the Legality of Brutal Tactic  —  WASHINGTON — When Justice Department lawyers engaged in a sharp internal debate in 2005 over brutal interrogation techniques, even some who believed that using tough tactics was a serious mistake agreed on a basic point: the methods themselves were legal.

Shotgun Wedding: Court Docs Reveal Govt. Likely Forced Chrysler Deal With Minimal Knowledge of Fiat  —  Even if they ultimately lose their last-minute court battle, the Indiana pension funds defending their rights as secured first-lien creditors of Chrysler have done a valuable deed.

Gingrich: Americans ‘surrounded by paganism.’  —  On Friday, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Oliver North visited Rock Church in Hampton Roads, Virginia to give a three-hour long lecture on “Rediscovering God in America.”  The speakers warned the audience about the “continuing availability of abortion …

Tetris: From Russia With Fun!  —  Sputnik burned up in the atmosphere, Berlin is now one city, but 25 years later, the Soviet-designed Tetris remains one of the most popular and ubiquitous video games ever created.  It has sold over 125 million copies, been released for nearly every video-game platform …

Schwarzenegger suggests state consider flat tax  —  Could the flat tax come to California?  —  Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said today that he would like to see such “radical” proposals come out of a commission now studying an overhaul of the state's tax system.

FDL Book Salon: Idiot America with Charles Pierce  —  Don't want to be an American idiot.  —  One nation controlled by the media.  —  Information age of hysteria.  —  It's calling out to idiot America.  — Green Day, “American Idiot”  —  Nearly every day for the past four years …

Focus on La Familia: How Dobson's outfit inspires one of the deadliest Mexican drug cartels  —  Most of us are familiar with James Dobson's Focus on the Family outfit, since they've played a major role in promoting the religious right's positions for the past decade and more nationally …

We Stand With Sonia Sotomayor  —  [Poster by Favianna Rodriguez for Presente.]  —  The Right is throwing every little bit of ugliness they can at Sonia Sotomayor in hopes of derailing her nomination to the Supreme Court.  —  They've called her a racist.  They've compared the National Council of La Raza to the Ku Klux Klan.

Alabama County Set to Halt Services, Shut Buildings  —  Alabama's most populous county is preparing to stop road maintenance, close courthouses and shutter services for the elderly after a court struck down taxes that pay for about 35 percent of its budget.  —  Jefferson County …

Obama's message of weakness  —  Recommend  —  As recently as last summer, General Motors filing for bankruptcy would have been the biggest news story of the week.  But it's not such a very great step from the unthinkable to the inevitable, and by the time it actually happened the market barely noticed …

Pawlenty: “Like Eminem” At MTV Awards, GOP Must “Regroup”  —  Addressing a convention of nat'l college GOPers gathered in Washington three days after announcing he will not run for a third term, MN Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) said that to succeed, GOPers must hold fast to their principles, but …

Newsweek's Evan Thomas: Obama Is ‘Sort of God’  —  Newsweek editor Evan Thomas brought adulation over President Obama's Cairo speech to a whole new level on Friday, declaring on MSNBC: “I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above - above the world, he's sort of God.”