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To update my main page piece from earlier this afternoon:

The just announced agreement between the Senate and House on the stimulus bill puts an exclamation point to the idea of cameras in the negotiations. The answer to transparency is (surprise) no. As in NO!!! Unanswered: is the ACORN money that disappeared from the Senate bill back in -- or out? Senator Specter just appeared on camera with Senators Collins, Reid, and company, saying not a word about this. The answer on tax cuts seems to have dropped from a Rush-like 40-something to the 30ish range. The question on this remains: was there at some point an effort made to jack the tax cuts up to 40-plus percent of the bill -- in effect some sort of silent salute to Rush -- and just not mention the source of the idea? What kind of cuts are they? In other words, are they real? This is a terrible piece of legislation, but since it's there the sooner the details are known the better.

As this is written, local talk radio in the Harrisburg area, (the Bob Durgin Show follows Rush) is pounding the daylights out of Specter. The anger is palpable, many citing Rush as their source for news. One topic: health care and any rules in this bill that would have kept Specter from his cancer treatments had he been a private citizen. Resentment, and the certainty that taxpayers are being robbed blind in perpetuity, is running very high.