So much going on today, obviously the Reid decision being the big story, that a lot of little stories had to take a back seat. Here are some of them!

UPDATE: The President announced that he would sign the defense authorization bill this week. That means he will sign the gay-inclusive hate crimes bill, even with that bit of defense pork in it. I think that makes the Franken rape amendment fairly safe, too.

• Before Reid’s announcement, Christina Romer of the Council of Economic Advisers appeared at a Center for American Progress event on health care, and reading the contemporaneous reports, she either supported the excise tax on high-end insurance plans as the top item to reduce health care costs, supported a public option but called her support “preliminary”, preferred the public option to the trigger, or used very odd language in that support, or all of those things.

• Those brutal Iraqi car bombings, the biggest loss of life in Iraq in years, are worrying many policymakers that they will complicate efforts to withdraw from the country. I’d expect more attacks through the elections, not less. Juan Cole has much more.

• Paul Krugman, perhaps anticipating today’s announcement from Reid, asks how well reform will work once it passes. He looks to the experience of Massachusetts and doubts a popular backlash. Hopefully, the Congress will be constrained to provide a policy people need once creating the structure of reform.

• The AFL-CIO starts to make pleasant noises about compromise on both the public option and the excise tax.

• If you can stomach it, read Julian Sanchez on the futile efforts to fix the Patriot Act and the FISA law, as the White House resists any change to enhance civil liberties protections. Definitely the most depressing read of the day.

• If Dawn Johnsen is moving toward confirmation as head of the Office of Legal Counsel, nobody in the Senate, neither those in favor or opposed, has much to say about it.

• Shiela Bair, the head of the FDIC, certainly seems enthused about the proposed legislation to address “too big to fail” institutions, saying that it would end the bailouts. Bankers must like the bailouts, and the free money it entails, because their top lobbyist is opposed to the policy.

• Turns out that Christie Vilsack, wife of the US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, won’t challenge Chuck Grassley for his Senate seat in Iowa.

• It looks like the Congress will phase out the homebuyer tax credit, a costly proposal included in the federal stimulus. The tax credit had the effect of adding money to the base price of homes by propping up the market, and investigators have seen widespread abuse with the tax credit. This is generally a good decision.

• Chris Dodd introduced a bill today to freeze credit card rates on existing balances between now and when the federal guidelines under the new credit card bill take effect. By the time they pass that through Congress, however, it could be a moot point.

• The New York Post gossips that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has privately told former Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani that he’s running for Governor, presumably to scare him out of the race. Cuomo would be heavily favored to succeed David Paterson.

• More Republican stalwarts start to endorse Doug Hoffman, the third-party Conservative Party candidate, in that Congressional race in upstate New York. Today it’s Tim Pawlenty.